


A Terrifically Bad Idea

by excepttemptation



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Anal Fisting, Angel has her shit together, Attempted Sexual Assault, BDSM, Belts, Bondage, Branding, Breathplay, Captivity, Charles is confused, Collars, Coming Untouched, Consent Issues, Damnit Charles I am not having a stroke, Erik has no idea what he's doing, Erik is an activist, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hotel Sex, I should never write my OTPs, Kidnapping, Logan needs a vacation, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Neither do I, Not the sort of dub-con I was expecting, Oral Sex, Past underage shenanigans referenced, Restraints, Rimming, So much drinking, Some people are pets, Spanking, Underage Pets, just deserts are coming, sedatives, sort of, way too many un-had conversations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:32:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 66
Words: 100,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excepttemptation/pseuds/excepttemptation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles has been the personal Pet of high-profile businessman Sebastian Shaw, whose impending marriage to Emma Frost comes with certain conditions-- namely, that he ditch the Pet.  At Azazel's suggestion, Erik purchases Charles's contract in an attempt to glean information about Shaw's not-quite-legal banking practices.  Azazel is surprisingly unconcerned when that doesn't quite play out how they expect it to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Erik is certain this is a monumentally bad idea.  It had made enough sense, three weeks ago, when Azazel had spawned this ridiculous plan.  
  
Charles has spent five years as Shaw’s Pet-- if there’s anyone other than Shaw’s accountants who understands how Shaw’s creative bookkeeping works, it’d be Charles.  It’s not as though Shaw ever lets Charles out of arm’s reach.  Or he hadn’t, at least, until Charles’s contact went up on the market decades sooner than anyone had bothered to expect.  
  
The suddenness of it had left an opening for Azazel to slip right into.  Really, it should have registered as a Bad Sign when Azazel had already drawn up preliminary documents on Erik’s behalf.  Of their small, anti-ownership troupe, Erik’s the only one who maintains the facade of keeping Pets.  There are a couple who have been with him for years now, helping run the business side of things, helping coordinate the network of people who privately oppose ownership laws. Without their oversight and a bit of funding from Lehnsherr Engineering, Erik doesn't know how they'd be able to get Pets to people who live far enough off the grid to actually be able to help integrate them into cities out west. But Erik's used to them-- and more importantly, they're used to him.  
  
Almost against his better judgement, he’s already mapping out a timeline in his head for Charles.  If there are going to be depositions, it might take as long as a year before Charles can slip away from public attention enough to get set up out west, where the laws are more lax. Hopefully to a state that won't ship him back to New York, if he's found out.  
  
But, fuck, a year.  
  
It’s been three since Erik took on a new Pet.  
  
This has to be a terrible idea.  
  
“Come on, he’s not even going to be here until tomorrow-- were you this wound up before I turned up?”  Angel asks, clearly trying to amuse herself while her hands bicker with the espresso machine.  
  
Erik doesn’t dignify that with a response.  
  
  
  
  
Charles’s fingers are cold.  He misses his gloves.  And his books.  And his bed.  Of course, none of it can be counted as _his_ anymore.  Not that it ever had been, but Sebastian had let him pretend.  
  
Turning a blank gaze to the passing streetlights beyond the car window, Charles tries to let those sorts of thoughts slip away from him.  It’s harder than he expects; it’s been two weeks since he’s even seen Sebastian.  Since Emma had moved in and Charles had been moved to the guest wing.  And that evening, when a lawyer and a handler had shown up to collect him, Sebastian hadn’t even come to say goodbye.  
  
It’s probably for the best.  A new owner wouldn’t appreciate someone else’s bruises on a new Pet.  
  
“Under other circumstances, we generally like to introduce owners to new Pets prior to installing them in a home,” Mr. Kane is saying, but Charles knows he isn’t the one being addressed.  
  
He does, however, put up a decent semblance of engaging, turning his head.  If it weren’t for the fact that there are three of them, Charles doubts they would have gone to the trouble of a limo.  Having Mr. Kane here makes sense, but he doesn’t really understand why it was necessary for Mr. Lehnsherr’s lawyer to be here.  
  
“We appreciate the accommodation,” the lawyer says, sounding entirely unapologetic.  Try as he might, Charles can’t remember the man’s last name.  
  
“Mr. Lehnsherr is a busy man,” Charles says mildly, taking the opportunity to puncture the bubble of tension he can feel expanding between Mr. Kane and the lawyer.  Besides, Mr. Kane reports back to a bureaucracy, while the other will no doubt be reporting back to Erik; it would take an idiot not to realise which side he should take.  
  
Finally, Mr. Kane looks over to Charles and offers him a small smile.  
  
Charles wishes he could have just been escorted by the lawyer.  
  
  
  
  
Somehow, it had been surprising that Mr. Lehnsherr lives in the city.  Charles has been to the city, of course, but both Sebastian and the Babishes had maintained residences beyond the city limits.    
  
Where Charles is to live doesn’t really matter-- or at least, all that he manages to feel about the location is a swell of gratitude to for the lack of photographers as they’d made their way from the car and through the lobby.  Cameras always seemed to be hovering around Sebastian whenever they go to the city.  There’s no reason for them to show interest in Charles, by himself, but he’s glad for the privacy, nonetheless.  
  
He hadn’t expected Mr. Lehnsherr to be late, but Azazel doesn’t seem surprised.  Mr. Kane, however, seems to be a bit put out by it.  Charles is surprised Mr. Kane hasn’t cracked a tooth with the way he’s been grinding his jaw by the time Mr. Lehnsherr arrives.  
  
“I told you that construction in midtown was going to fuck up traffic,” Azazel says, by way of greeting.  
  
“Do you want some kind of medal for that prediction?”  Erik returns flatly.  Charles can hear the rustling of a coat, he thinks, but he doesn’t dare look up.  Not without being acknowledged.  
  
“We’ve been waiting for--”  
  
“I appreciate your patience.”  There’s an edge to Erik's words that seems to undercut the sentiment; Charles can hear Mr. Kane’s teeth click together when he shuts his mouth.  “So, this is him?”  
  
It takes focus, but no real effort, for Charles to keep himself from going too-still.  He simply keeps breathing, keeps his eyes on the carpet just beyond where he kneels on the floor next to Mr. Kane.  
  
“Charles, yes,” Mr. Kane clarifies, his annoyance bleeding into his tone.  “As you’d know, if you’d been able to--”  
  
He stops short as Angel bursts around the corner, her eyes fixed exclusively on Erik.  “Sir, excuse me, but there’s an urgent call on your private line,”  Angel says, breathless from rushing.  
  
“Surely it can wait,” Erik says slowly, despite how much he wishes he could take the excuse and leave this particular farce behind.  
  
“Your mother’s in the hospit--”  
  
“Gentlemen.  Excuse me,” he says, immediately ushering Angel back down the hallway, following when she hurries along up the stairs to his study.  
  
But there’s no call holding on the phone atop his spartan desk.  Erik’s blood all but boils at the prospect of the call having been dropped, but when he turns to find Angel calmly shutting the door behind them, something to his temper stumbles.  
  
“Angel--”  is a warning, menacing growl.  
  
“Oh, relax.  She’s fine,” she grins over her shoulder.  “But it’s not like anyone can argue with ‘a family crisis’-- and believe me, if I’d left you in a room with an agent for more than two minutes, you’d have fucked the whole thing up.”  
  
She’s not entirely off base, so Erik doesn’t grumble as he settles himself into the chair behind his desk.  Adoption agents make him sick.  The way they play at serving a Pet’s best interest, as if they don’t hand over victims to new abusers every single day--  the charade tries the limits of Erik’s patience.  
  
“So why don’t you just wait here, I’ll go make your excuses, and then I can get Charles settled in a bit.”  It’s an offer and advice all at once, he’s sure, and Erik’s inclined to trust her judgement.  It’ll take Charles a while to realise Erik’s not going to demand anything from him.  For now, he’ll probably be more comfortable around Angel, anyway.  
  
A roll of Erik’s eyes and a wave of his hand marks his concession.  He waits until he can hear Angel’s footsteps far down the hall before he glances to his phone.  Swearing under his breath, he resigns himself to pulling his mobile from his pocket to look up his mother’s phone number before dialing it on the landline.  
  
  
  
  
Clearly, Erik’s made the right decision in removing himself from the situation for a bit.  As he makes his way towards the kitchen, his house blissfully free of both agents and lawyers, the voices he hears are relaxed and amiable.  
  
He’d had to cut off his call with his mother to take a perfectly mundane, exquisitely tedious call about permit deadlines, but it’s an annoyance that slips to the back of his mind as his catches sight of Angel and Charles in the kitchen.  Even if this is a headache, getting someone out of Shaw’s clutches and, hopefully, out of the system, is always worth it.  
  
Charles’s posture is still a bit stiff, but he seems far less wide-eyed than he had... however long ago it was that he’d shown up.  Erik had lost track of the time he’d spent in his office.  
  
“See-- he’d forget to eat if we didn’t feed him,” Angel smirks, nudging Charles with her elbow.  Before finishing off her latte - she’d eventually managed to bend the machine to her will - she adds, “‘s why he’s all skin and bones.”  
  
“If you’re trying to channel my mother, you’re only about fifty per cent there,” he returns dryly.  
  
For a moment, he doesn’t understand why the comment knits Charles’s brow together.  
  
“I do hope your mother’s all right,”  Charles says, with an earnestness that has Erik hesitating to explain that it had been nothing more than a tactic.  Not that he should feel badly-- it had been Angel’s idea, not his.  She should have explained that, rather than let Charles do something as perfectly decent as worry after someone else’s mother.  
  
“False alarm,” Angel dismisses, setting her mug in the sink.  “Don’t even worry about it.”  
  
Erik watches Charles smile at her as she takes his cup, watches his face try to smooth itself out as it fades from his mouth.  The kid’s probably exhausted, if not as much from the day as from years as Shaw’s Pet.  A proper night’s sleep without someone pawing at him will probably do him a world of good.  
  
“Come on.  Let’s get you settled,” he says, poaching Angel’s words.  
  
It’s the first time Charles meets his gaze.  Despite the fact that he can’t quite discern the sentiment behind the bright light of Charles's eyes, he finds it encouraging.  
  
  
  
  
 _You’ll sleep here.  Goodnight._  
  
His new Owner has spoken no more than ten words to him.  Barely even looked at him before shutting Charles away in what looks like a guest bedroom.  Alone.  
  
Charles has to hold at bay the fear that he’s done something wrong.  They’ve.  They’ve only just met, after all.  And there had been that... scare, involving Mrs. Lehnsherr.  It’s been years since Charles’s own mother has crossed his thoughts, but if something had happened to her, he can only imagine it’d be upsetting.  Or, if something had _almost_ happened.  
  
He ought to be grateful, that his Owner doesn’t want to spend their first night together venting frustrations.  If only the silence of the room would stop ringing in his ears, he’s quite sure he could manage gratitude.  
  
Charles breathes.  Slow and steady.  Lets his mind grow quiet and his thoughts get gauzy.    
  
 _You’ll sleep here._  
  
Surely, his Owner only means for the night.  But why even bother?  Why not assert his claim as quickly as possible?  
  
Erik Lehnsherr takes shape in his head whilst his limbs operate on a kind of autopilot as he sits himself down on the bed, trying to unravel the meanings behind the information he has.  Erik Lehnsherr is reserved.  Purposeful, so there has to be a reason.  He wouldn’t have bought Charles if he didn’t find him attractive.  And Charles is mostly sure that he hasn’t been here long enough to do something to upset Erik.  
  
So, perhaps it’s personal.  That there’s no love lost between Sebastian and Erik Lehnsherr is hardly a secret-- perhaps there’s something to that.  Erik Lehnsherr has built his engineering firm up from next to nothing, despite Sebastian’s attempts to undercut his business.  Really, he’s the sort of man Charles would have expected would want a Pet with a clean contract.  Someone new and untouched.  
  
Charles smiles, surprised it took him so long to tease things out.  Not everyone likes young Pets, and those who don’t rarely want to spend the time waiting for them to get to the proper age, so it’s easier to take in an older Pet.  His fingers begin slipping the buttons of his shirt loose.  His Owner probably doesn’t like that he’d been Sebastian’s first.  Doesn’t want the reminder.  He probably wants to pretend that Charles has never been anyone else’s, let alone Sebastian’s.  
  
Come morning, his Owner can pretend that Charles has always been here.  Can give him clothes of his Owner’s own choosing.  The trousers he’s stepping out of had been provided by Sebastian.  The collar around his neck had been designed for him, by Sebastian.  
  
No self-respecting man would take another man’s Pet.  Charles finds himself smiling, more than a little proud, as he makes his way to the en suite bathroom.  He doesn’t need to be instructed to bathe; if his Owner wants a fresh start, Charles will do everything he can to make it so.  
  
As much as he likes the idea, as much he thinks it shows class on his Owner’s part, when he lifts his hands to unfasten his collar, his fingers tremble.  The bathroom mirror is starting fog, but it’s not so far gone that Charles can’t see his reflection shaking.  In five years, he hasn’t been without his collar.  The branded leather fastened around his throat has been part of what has kept him safe.  It’s been a warning to poachers and and owners alike.  It’s evidence that he exists under someone else’s protection.  
  
Not that Charles has ever needed it.  He’d never allow himself to be taken from his Owner-- not alive, anyway.  He knows his own calibur.  He is an exceptionally good Pet.  He had been for Sebastian, and he will be for his new Owner.  So he pries his collar free from his neck, letting it slip from his grasp and fall to the floor without a second glance.  He’s not Sebastian’s anymore.  
  
Forcing a few ragged breaths into his lungs, Charles holds at bay the dizziness that threatens to overwhelm him.  When he steps into the shower, he braces his palms against warm tile.  He can endure a night without it.  He can do that for his Owner.  And if he can’t, then he isn’t worthy of his Owner.  It’s as simple as that.  
  
He just has to make it through tonight.  Just has to make it till tomorrow.  And tomorrow-- tomorrow will be lovely.  He’s sure of it.


	2. Chapter 2

The gray-pink of pre-dawn light soaks through the thin curtains of the windows that dominate one wall of the bedroom.  Odd, how it makes it look as though the ceiling is glowing.  It takes a moment for the thought to register before Charles shoves himself up in bed, heart crashing thumps against his ribcage.  
  
He’s alone.  
  
A new sort of terror bolts up his spine before he remembers that things have... changed.  All at once, it comes crashing back, and the relief is so profound that he flops back against the bed without a scrap of poise.  
  
Breathe, he reminds himself.  
  
Whatever the day holds, he’ll survive it.  He’s sure of it.  Because he has to be.  Brushing past his thoughts like pages in a book, he grounds himself in the optimism he’d felt last night.  Yesterday morning, he’d still been Sebastian’s.  Today, he has a new Owner.  And things will be fine.  
  
Grounding himself in ritual and habit, Charles steps into the bathroom once more to start up a quick shower.  It’s more to rinse himself fresh than anything else, seeing as to how the bathroom has nothing helpful like deodorant or toothpaste.  After drying himself off and rinsing his mouth as best he can, he takes stock of his reflection.  
  
His hair’s a bit... fluffy.  He’d washed it last night, but there hadn’t been much to treat it with, so now it just looks sloppy with sleep.  Sloppy, not tousled.  For the life of him, he doesn’t understand why someone felt compelled to merge shampoo and conditioner into a single product, but he’s content to blame whoever they are for the disappointing state of his hair.  
  
Wetting his hands with cold water, Charles rakes his fingers through his hair, calming it down to something presentable.  After hanging up his towel, he heads back to the bedroom.  A small part of him is surprised that he’s still alone, but he shoves that aside and sets to making the bed.  His Owner probably has someone to take care of that, but he’s quite sure that a used bed would hardly fit with the fresh-and-unspoilt image he suspects would be most helpful; it’s why he leaves his old clothes folded on the chair in the room, rather than shifting them to the bed.  Besides, his old clothes will probably be discarded, rather than washed.  Actually--  
  
Just that quickly, Charles snatches up the tidy shirt and trousers and settles them into the bin near the window.  
  
Once Charles is satisfied that the room is - for all visual purposes - just as he’d found it, he kneels on the carpet just beyond the foot of the bed.  Sitting back on his ankles, he places his hands, palms up, atop his thighs, and waits.  He lets his mind wander, scrolling through books he’s memorised, retreating within himself until time loses all real meaning.  
  
  
  
  
“Where is he?”  Erik asks, when he realises he’s onto his second cup of coffee.  He’d gone out of his way to hold off coming downstairs until nine, hoping to give Charles a chance to sleep in before Angel could seize an excuse to start making breakfast.  
  
“Logan says he heard the water going at six,”  Angel shrugs, sending the shoulder of her oversized shirt slipping off her shoulder.  
  
She opens her mouth again, but she’s drowned out by the ready beep of the waffle iron, prompting her to pour a ladle of batter atop it.  Erik doesn’t entirely understand her recently developed interest in the culinary arts, but he happens to enjoy waffles, so he isn’t complaining.  He turns his eyes back to his tablet, skimming for news; after her last attempt at making (burning) omelets, he’s learned that it’s in his best interest to let her alone until she’s ready to talk when there's cooking going on.  
  
“I dunno, Erik-- he’s a lapdog.  I’ve never dealt with that sort.”  It’s more a sigh than anything else.  “But I know the sort of controlling asshole guys like Shaw are.  I mean, come on, if you were Shaw, would you eat breakfast with a Pet?”  she asks, gesturing the the fork in her hand.    
  
“You think he’s waiting for me to be done?” Erik asks, finding it difficult to argue.  
  
“I’m saying I don’t think he’d know he doesn’t have to unless somebody tells him.”  Her pointed glance clearly states who she thinks that should be.  And, as though he needed any confirmation, she suggests, “Tell him there are waffles.”

  
Erik doesn’t manage a word once he opens the door.  Because Charles is sitting-- _kneeling_ there on the floor.  Naked.  All pale skin and a dusting of freckles and Erik can’t help but be glad that Charles’s eyes are glued to the floor because it gives him a moment to wrench his own gaze away.  
  
“There are clothes in the drawers.”  The words fall out his mouth smoothly enough for him to think he hasn’t made an awkward situation worse.  “Just.  Put something on, and come down for breakfast.”  
  
The only reason he knows Charles heard him is because he hazards a glance in Charles’s direction in time to see him nod.  If he didn’t know any better, he’d think that Charles looks more tense now than he had when Erik had opened the door.  
  
“Angel’s making waffles,” he adds, as an afterthought, before stepping back into the hall and pulling the door shut behind him.  It might be the stupidest thing he’s said all day, but at least the day’s only just starting.  
  
  
As soon as he's alone again, Charles’s stomach is trying to tie itself in knots, fear trying to eat through the buffer of hope he’d wrapped around himself, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from being ill.  That hadn’t gone at all like he’d expected it to.  His new Owner hadn’t even touched him.  Hadn’t even wanted to look at him.  
  
Fine.  
  
That’s fine.    
  
Forcing his thoughts in the direction of gratitude, he pushes himself to his feet, carefully ignoring the pins and needles that jab down his legs from kneeling so long.  
  
The drawers are filled with clothes, but little of what Charles is accustomed to wearing.  Why, exactly, he’d need so many pairs of jeans seems a mystery until he realises whoever had bought them must not have been aware of his actual size, and as there seems to be something of a range.  All of his measurements are part of his adoption papers, so it seems like a strange oversight.  
  
Unless the clothes had been bought well in advance-- too far in advance for his Owner to know exactly who he was getting.  It’s a heartwarming thought, the idea of his Owner so eagerly anticipating his arrival.  Reality threatens to snuff out the comfort in the notion, however; his Owner doesn’t seem eager about much of anything to do with him.  
  
Fighting the urge to scratch at his neck, he rushes through the available selection until he manages to find a pair of jeans that hang low enough on his hips to be suitable and a long sleeved shirt that clings enough to make up for the skin it doesn’t show.  He feels patently ridiculous, of course, but he’s been instructed to wear far more absurd things in the past, so he rakes a hand through his hair and heads downstairs.  
  
  
“What are you doing?”  Erik asks as one of Charles’s knees touch down to the floor next to his chair. He can’t help the edge to his voice, even if hearing it stings at his pride.  He can’t help it that Charles looks like a walking advert for the lure of pleasure Pets-- not that he thinks it’s Charles’s fault.  The poor kid probably just grabbed the first things he found before coming downstairs.  He still doesn’t understand why Charles had been naked - or what the hell had happened to Charles’s clothes in the first place - but he probably could have smoothed things over with a little more tact.  
  
And he could probably use a little more tact than he’s employing at the moment, too, if the way Charles has practically frozen is any indication.  
  
“We’re not in public,” he says, distantly wondering how just long Charles’s eyes can stay open without blinking.  When that doesn’t help, he adds, a bit more slowly, “You don’t have to bother with that nonsense.”  
  
Angel rounds the peninsula that separates the table from the kitchen to put down two plates of syrup-coated waffles, giving Erik the somewhat-overdone plate and leaving the perfectly golden brown waffle for Charles.  
  
“Sit.  Eat,” Erik bites as a last resort, because Charles still hasn’t moved, unable to interpret the wave of tension that passes through Charles’s posture, the clench of his jaw and the tightening of his lips that, somehow, looks like it could be mistaken for disapproval.  
  
Five years with Shaw.  Plenty of time for significant head injury.  Which may complicate matters.  But rumor has it that Shaw’s had Charles remarkably well-educated, so there can’t be all that much wrong with his head.  
  
“You have to tell me what you think,”  Angel instructs warmly, giving Charles a half-smile as he carefully perches himself on the chair.  “The recipe is supposed to have blueberries in them, but it wanted fresh and all we had were frozen, so I just left them out.”  
  
It’s something of a ruse-- Angel’s had at least two waffles already, calling the first a ‘test waffle’ and the second ‘quality control.’  She wouldn’t look so pleased with herself if they weren’t more than passable.  More than likely, she’s just trying to get Charles talking, so Erik keeps his mouth shut about the fact that Angel’s all but drowned his waffle with artificial maple flavouring.  
  
“Best waffle I’ve had in years,” Charles says after his first bite.  The sound of Charles’s voice is nearly startling, though it’s not as though Charles had said much of anything at all the night before.  He can’t quite pull a clear memory of the sound of it to the front of his mind, so he can’t tell if Charles sounds more or less steady now.  
  
Angel’s smile widens, and after tossing a wink in Charles’s direction, she descends on the waffle maker once more.    
  
She’s probably trying to give Charles a chance to eat in peace, but the silence that grows feels more dense than relaxed.  And Charles just sits there, delicately taking small bites of breakfast as if there’s nothing strange about today, while somehow also managing to seem like he expects the roof to cave in on him without warning.  It has to violate the natural laws of the universe for a human being to be so composed and so on edge all at the same time.  
  
Every other Pet he’s helped had at least given him something to work with-- fear or anger or a mix of both.  Erik knows how to deal with that.  Whatever _this_ is, he can’t even put a name to, yet.  
  
Maybe Angel’s got a point about about Charles having been a.... Erik doesn’t like the term _lapdog_.  Apart from it being patently dehumanizing, it makes him feel rude, to even consider imagining Charles draped across Shaw’s lap.  
  
Actually, it grinds his appetite down to nothing.  
  
  
Charles worries that eating so little might offend Angel, but his nerves are to pickled for him to manage even half of the waffle in front of him.  Every time he swallows he only becomes more acutely aware of how naked his neck is.  While he can cut short his own second-guesses about having taken off Sebastian’s collar, he can’t completely dismiss the desire to touch along that exposed skin.  He does, however, manage to keep his hands from succombing to the temptation.  
  
Angel's collar from yesterday is gone, but she's clearly a house Pet-- perhaps one of several, seeing as to she only seems to concern herself with cooking. Charles has seen house Pets go without collars before.  
  
“So.  You were Shaw’s for five years.”  
  
Ah, business.  At last.  Some of the tension that comes from waiting - waiting, and not knowing what to expect, or when - starts to uncoil from around the base of Charles’s spine.  He’s all too happy to set down his fork.    
  
It might not be a question, per se, but he knows when he’s expected to reply.  In and of itself, it’s a welcome distraction from not only the lack of a collar, but the fact that he’s sitting at his Owner’s table without having done anything to earn the privilege.  
  
“Four years and eleven months,” he says, not wanting to be noted as inattentive, and entirely too glad to be onto a topic where he knows the proper answers.  “Prior to that, I was on temporary, month-to-month contract--”  
  
“Babish, was it?”  
  
It takes Charles no time at all to recover from being interrupted, nodding before he sips his tea.  “A strictly platonic contract; he had an ailing niece,”  safe enough to say-- everyone knew that.  And anyone who was anyone has attended his annual fundraiser for Menkes disease.  “I was taken to be her companion.”  Really it had been little short of an honour to be trusted with that sort of responsibility so young.  To care for and about someone, to know when to get help.  And, if Charles were the sort to place value or preference on his time, the ten months he’d spent with Eleanor were perhaps the happiest of his life.  “But that was when I was eleven, and it lasted less than a year.  I spent another year and a half back at School before Mr. Shaw pursued an adoption.”  
  
He’d have kept going, if it weren’t for the venomous air abruptly radiating off of his Owner. It sets off every warning Charles possess, inspiring a fresh rush of panic over the fact that he’s not on his knees.  Immediately, he starts replaying things over and over in his mind, trying to sort out where he’d misspoken or misstepped.  
  
“You were _twelve_ when Shaw took you?”  
  
“Oh, excuse me, Sir, I’d-- I was thirteen,” he clarifies quickly.  After all, there are most certainly rules about that sort of thing.  His first adoption had been perfectly legal, as was his initial acquisition.  Suddenly worried that his quality might be in question, and not a little grateful that such things apparently matter to his Owner, he’s quick to add, “I have an _exemplary_ pedigree--”  
  
“Stop it.  Don’t do that.”  The curt interruption is enough for Charles’s teeth to click together when he snaps his mouth shut and drops his gaze to his lap.  The silence drags on, excruciating, for a few thick moments until a gruff voice says, “Call me Erik.”  
  
Charles can’t even begin to try to tell if the two instructions are related.  
  
“Of course,” he says after a moment.  It takes more effort than he likes to admit to add, “Erik.”    
  
Yet another privilege given out too easily, for no reason Charles can discern.  As uneasy as it makes him, it isn’t his place to question.  But now Charles can’t remember what they were talking about.  Maybe he’d be able to think if he weren’t so acutely aware of the fact that he’s sitting in a chair next to his Owner-- and that no one else  finds this at all strange.  
  
“I’ll be gone all day.”  Erik is already standing, offering no indication of whether Charles should stay, or follow, or _anything_ at all.  
  
The way his stomach starts tying itself in knots, he tries to blame it on having had too much syrup.  
  
  
  
  
“So.  When’s the new guy get here?”  
  
Charles suspects that’s Logan-- one of the few Pets in the city with a license to drive, according to Angel.  From her description, it sounds more like he works for Erik rather than being owned by him, but Charles isn’t about to call that to anyone’s attention.  
  
“ _Charles_ is upstairs in his room, probably recovering from Erik’s charming morning-self.”  
  
For a moment, he debates closing his bedroom door.  He’d prefer it closed, but without any idea how long ‘all day’ meant to his-- to Erik, he just wants to be able to tell when the elevator arrives.  
  
Logan makes an indiscernible sound, muffled by distance.  Stairs run up and down both ends of the second level, and Charles’s room sits squarely in the middle.  He supposes that makes sense, with Angel and Erik on opposite ends so that they’d know if he started wandering around in the middle of the night.  
  
“That happened quick.”  
  
“I think Azazel handled most of it, through Shaw’s lawyers, I guess.”  She already sounds bored.  Charles tries to estimate how long Logan has before Angel tries to feed him something.  
  
“Azazel bugs me.”  
  
“Oh, and that makes him different from the rest of the damned world, _how_ , exactly?”  
  
“You don’t bug me.”  
  
“Liar.  You only like me when you’re hungry.”  
  
One corner of Charles’s mouth drags upwards before he catches himself.  There’s no reason he ought to feel badly, apart from the eavesdropping, but his own idleness is eating at his nerves.  He’d be perfectly fine, laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for Erik to come home, but Erik hadn’t told him to do that.  He’s only doing it because he doesn’t know what he ought to be doing.  
  
All he knows is that he ought to be doing something.  
  
  
  
  
The day’s been a disaster.  
  
Not that anything has happened, but that’s the problem.   _Nothing_ has happened.  
  
After Erik had sent him up to bed, he’d at least expected Erik to follow.  Or arrive, at some point.  But he’d heard Erik come up the stairs and retire to his own room, alone, over an hour ago.   _1:58 am_ glows tauntingly from the clock on the bedside table, and Charles is very seriously considering the possibility that Erik isn’t going to be coming to his room at all.  
  
Trying to calm the nauseating churn of his thoughts, Charles cups his hands around his neck.  Whatever relief he’d thought he get from it turns out to be nonexistent.  If anything, it only makes him more aware of how foreign, how terrifying it is, to feel the whole expanse of his neck without any claim of ownership there to tell him he’s safe.  
  
Erik doesn’t seem like the sort who’d want to play at some fantasy of having a... a ward, or something.  Then again, Angel behaves like his daughter.  Well, no, not daughter; Erik’s not that much older.  Younger sister, perhaps.  That makes enough sense, as she seems to run his household, but it doesn’t offer any clues as to who Charles is supposed to be.  
  
If Erik wanted to tell him, he would have.  So, he wants Charles to figure out on his own.  Or perhaps Angel’s supposed to tell him.  Although she’s nice, in a fashion Charles finds both bizarre and welcoming all at once, Charles has had years of training; he shouldn’t have to ask for advice on how to seduce his owner.  
  
Despite his best efforts, his thoughts slip back to when he’d arrived at Sebastian’s.  He’d been so excited by Charles’s arrival that he’d taken off two weeks from work.  Oh, he’d kept in touch with the office-- but with his laptop, so that he hadn’t even needed to leave the bed Charles had been leashed to.  
  
Another deep breath.  
  
He’s probably just working himself up for no reason.  Probably.  After all, there had been weeks when Charles had feared he’d never understand how to please Sebastian-- learning how to do it properly had taken the better part of a year.  His nerves are too on edge for him to keep from flinching as he his mind dips into some of the less pleasant memories from that first year.  
  
It takes a moment to shift his body from the default of an elegant lounge to his side, but he lets him body curl in on itself a bit.  He’s not sure if it’s more comfortable or not, but he pulls the blankets up over his bare chest and closes his eyes.    
  
He needs to sleep.  He needs to calm down and pay attention and figure out how to ensnare his Owner’s interest or he’s going to be sent back to the School.  
  
Or worse.


	3. Chapter 3

“Erik.  You have to do something.”  
  
“I am working,” he mutters, not looking up from his desk.  
  
Angel had been a bit quiet all through dinner, so her interrupting now is hardly a surprise.  Her being quiet is something he’s learned to regard as a warning.  
  
“I mean about Charles,” she says, insisting on his attention.  
  
Pulling back from his laptop, Erik sighs as he leans back in his chair to look at her.  
  
Yes, the past five days have been... peculiar.  Charles only seems to have two emotional states:  serene and panicked, covered by a thin veil of calm.  Actually, it’s probably just one emotional state, with a cover of artificial calm that waxes and wanes in its ability to be convincing.  
  
But what does she want him to do?  Grab Charles by the shoulders and shake him? Demand that he relax?  
  
“I thought the plan was to try to give him some time to adjust,” he says evenly.  The last time they did this, it had been pretty straightforward:  Angel had gotten the girl to open up, and it was Erik’s job to try to keep from alarming her, an objective he’d achieved by essentially avoiding her.  In the end, it had worked well enough.  Last he’d heard, she was a schoolteacher out in Seattle.  Perfect endorsement of the system.  
  
“He never comes out of his room-- What?  Don’t look at me like that, I _try_ , but I’m not going to drag him out,” she snaps.  
  
“If he wants to stay in his room, then I don’t see what the problem is,” he says slowly.  
  
“Have _you_ told him he can leave his room?”  Erik's frown deepens.  He hasn’t told Charles he _can’t_ leave his room.  “Because I don’t think it matters how many times _I_ tell him it’s okay.  He only ever comes down for breakfast and dinner, and I think it’s only because you’re there.”  
  
“Angel, it’s been almost a week.”  
  
Although his voice has gone low and sharp, she doesn’t so much as hesitate.  “That’s what I’m saying.  At first I thought he just needed a little time, and then it started seeming weird, and now I’m telling you.”  
  
All Erik can do is glare at her as he stalks by.  She should have told him sooner than this.  He’d probably have given Charles just as much time to settle himself in before doing something, but she should have told him before now that Charles has all but locked himself in his room.  
  
This time, he knocks.  And offers a silent prayer that Charles is wearing clothes.  The poor kid’s probably one wrong look away from a nervous breakdown, or something, and the last thing he needs is to be ogled by his owner.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
Erik doesn’t know why he’s surprised that Charles had called out rather than open the door himself.  Maybe it’s because Charles barely seems to talk at all.  Either way, it’s clear invitation to open the door, so Erik does his best to brace himself for whatever he finds.  
  
Well.  At least Charles is half-dressed.  If wearing pyjama bottoms counts as being half-dressed.  The rest of the clothes Erik’s ever seen him in have been little short of clingy, but what he has on now looks like one wrong step would send Charles’s pants slipping down his hips.  This, Erik is sure, is worse.  
  
And Charles just stands there, in the doorway to the bathroom, with a toothbrush in his hand and a kind of curiosity in his eyes that seems... new.  
  
Erik wants to kick himself.  
  
“What did you have for lunch today?”  As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he’s wishing he could take them back, rework them into something... else.  He’d wanted to avoid sounding like an interrogator, but he’s sure he missed the mark by a wide margin.  
  
“I haven’t left my room.”  Erik hadn’t known Charles could speak a soft, understated warmth.  He hadn’t known Charles had any other tone of voice beyond the delicately neutral thing he’s heard at breakfast all week.  
  
Instead of the wide-eyed mask of calm Erik expects, Charles’s posture relaxes, settling a shoulder against the door jam.  Looking at him now, he feels foolish for the fuss he and Angel had been making over minutes ago.  Charles seems fine.  Maybe he just likes his room.  Erik might even have been able to convince himself of this, if it weren’t for the nagging at on the edge of his thoughts that’s sure Charles expects him to be pleased by the answer.  
  
“Did I give you the impression that you shouldn’t?”  
  
Before Charles casts his gaze off to the side, Erik catches the flare of uncertainty.  Even the way Charles dampens his lower lip with his tongue looks like a stalling tactic.  Erik can practically hear the whirl of Charles’s thoughts as he tries to figure out what the ‘right’ answer is.  
  
Trying to cut Charles off before he implodes or passes out, Erik quickly lifts his hands in either surrender or apology or exhaustion and clarifies, “I hadn’t intended to.  Angel usually takes care of... that sort of thing.  I thought she’d have made that clear.”  
  
Charles rushes to get out the most adamant words Erik’s ever heard him utter: “She made every invitation-- it isn’t her fault.”  
  
Erik tries, very hard, to keep from making an exasperated sound.  One minute Charles actually seems to have relaxed a little, the next he’s skittish, and then the next he’s sticking up for Angel-- the last person who’d need to be stood up for, especially to Erik.  For now, it’s too late in the day to try to figure out what’s going on in Charles’s head, so he writes it off to the side effects of blood sugar regulation and skipping lunch all week.  
  
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Erik says, keeping a sigh in check.  Technically, it’s probably his own fault, but there’s no point in saying that when he’s almost positive Charles will disagree.  “I just wanted to make it clear that you can leave your room.  Even if I’m not here.  Not that you have to you,”  he immediately tacks on, just in case.  
  
It must not help in the slightest, because Charles just blinks owlishly at him.    
  
“You can go wherever you want in the apartment,” he tries again.  “Whenever you want.  Well, it’d be rude to go into anyone’s bedroom without their permission, obviously.  And I get sort of irritable when things in my office get moved around.  And you don’t have to eat lunch with Angel, but if you’re hungry - whenever you’re hungry - you can just... take something.  From the kitchen.”  
  
Surely, he’s starting to stray into overdoing it a little.  But at least Charles looks more considering and less terrified.  
  
“You wish me to understand that I am not confined to this room, but that I should respect boundaries of personal privacy,”  Charles says, carefully, but easily enough.  
  
“Exactly.”  There.  See.  Why couldn’t Angel have just told Charles _that_?  She’s infinitely better at this sort of thing than he is, and it seems like he’s managed to pull it off without traumatising Charles.  
  
Charles is back to leaning against the frame of the door, even if his fingers do seem to be toying with his toothbrush a just a bit nervously.  Otherwise, he seems fine.  And he doesn’t even sound all that nervous when he asks, “Do I look underfed to you?”  
  
Charles is slender, to be sure, but not skinny.  He certainly doesn’t look frail by any stretch of the imagination.  He’s a little on the short side, but it’s not as though he’s _small_.  Certainly not scrawny, by any means.  The question seems to come from so far out of the blue that it takes a few long seconds for Erik to realise he’s staring at Charles.  At not-Charles’s-face.  
  
“No,” he says, the word clipped.  Before his completely traitorous mouth can start rambling on again, Erik clears his throat, gives Charles a nod, and gets the hell out of the boy’s room.


	4. Chapter 4

Finding Erik’s collection of books behind the sleek cabinets in the smaller sitting room downstairs had, at first, seemed like the greatest relief to be found in the apartment.  Old comforts and entirely new, completely foreign titles - and an exquisite lack of Thoreau - make Charles feel, for the first time, that there might actually be a place for him here.  
  
Or at least, that he might not be completely out of place here.  
  
He still doesn’t know how to approach Erik.  Every time he feels as though he’s on the verge of an opening, Erik shuts himself away and then Charles has to start all over again at trying to unwind his Owner.  It’s abysmal, that all he has to console himself with is the fact that, sometimes, Erik will deign to look at him when he thinks no one’s paying attention.  
  
Once a week or so, Angel will put on a film, and without even realising how it happened, Charles will find himself sitting on the other side of the long couch from Erik.  Angel, who tends to take up residence in the nearby armchair, usually loses interest about halfway through and goes off to do whatever it is she does when she’s not trying to tell Erik what to do or waging war against the latest appliance to turn up in the kitchen.  From what Charles can tell, Erik uses the time on the couch to balance his checkbook.  Charles puts on a careful show of dozing off against the arm of the couch.  It’s been the highlight of the past two weeks, when Erik’s let himself just look at what he believes to be Charles’s sleeping form.  
  
If Erik would just let Charles sleep in his bed, he could watch Charles sleep as much as he wanted.  Around the time Charles finds himself wondering whether or not Erik is a somnophiliac, and why he doesn’t just put a sedative into Charles’s drink already, he starts to worry he’s coming a bit unraveled.  
  
So, despite Charles’s expectations, it’s the gym on the twentieth floor, rather than Erik’s personal library, that has Charles desperately eager.  
  
  
  
  
“You like working out?”  Erik doesn’t mean for it to come as skeptical as it sounds, but Charles’s obvious excitement seems a bit misplaced.    
  
It’s not even a very large gym--nothing more than a couple of treadmills, a bench, and an assortment of free weights.  Technically, it’s the old gym.  By the time Erik had purchased the top two floors of the building, Lehnsherr Engineering had gotten large enough to necessitate a much larger gym for employees, which now resides on the seventh floor.  The only reason he’s kept the smaller one is because Logan tends to get a bit territorial about about weightlifting areas to the point where it discourages employees from availing themselves of the gym altogether.  
  
Charles doesn’t even look up at him as he says, “Exercise is good for you.”  He blinks a couple of times and tentatively glances up at Erik.  “It’s a very nice gym.”  
  
Although Charles has yet to actually ask for anything, that he’s begun to offer up opinions without being directly prompted seems like a good sign.  
  
“It’s open from six in the morning till midnight.  I’ll have Logan make you an access card so you can take the elevator down here whenever you want.”  
  
When Angel had suggested he give Charles a tour of the building, he hadn’t really expected much to come of it, but when Charles smiles, the whole room gets a little brighter.  “Thank you, Erik.”  
  
So that.  That’s got to be progress.  For Charles to genuinely look happy about something.  
  
  
  
  
Something other than sweatpants would have been nice, but Charles isn’t about to complain.  He doesn’t have phone full of music to listen to while he runs anymore, but he doesn’t care.  
  
When he first starts jogging on the treadmill, it feels awkward and stiff until his muscles ease into remembering themselves.  It’s not long at all before Charles dials up the speed.  
  
After weeks of not leaving the apartment, of wearing so much clothing all the time, of not being touched by anyone, Charles has never felt so out of touch with his own body-- but as his heart rate picks up, it’s like he can reclaim his skin, inch by inch, shaking off laziness and lethargy.  
  
Too much sitting around doing nothing but waiting.  Too much of Angel and Erik making sure he ‘eats enough.’  They both have a completely deranged sense of how much he ought to be eating when he’s not even expected to meet any physical demands.  Even his worry about that slips away, along with the rest of his thoughts as Charles gets lost in wearing himself out.  As he increases the speed again, slightly.  As he tries to sweat out the bone-deep need to be touched.  
  
If this is the only way he has to exhaust himself, then so be it.  He’ll do this.  And maybe, if he runs himself ragged enough, some rational bout of inspiration will strike him.

  
  
“Hey!  Kid!  You okay?”  
  
Were Charles to be awoken by a bear, he imagines this is what it would be like.  
  
Except that there are _hands_ on him.  And it’s all wrong.  Hands he doesn’t know are clutching at his clothes, and it jolts Charles alert with a violent suddenness.  In an instant he’s shoving himself backwards, trying to push those hands away until the back of his head clunks against something cold and metal.  
  
“Hey, it’s okay, hands are up here.”  It the same gruff voice, but less urgent.  
  
Charles eyes are trying to squeeze themselves shut and it takes an absurd amount of effort to blink them open against the throbbing in his head.  Not that looking is much help; the man standing several feet away, with his hands carefully raised to where Charles can see them, he knows more by voice than by face.  In three weeks with Erik, Charles hasn’t ever actually come face-to-face with the man now in front of him.  
  
“You’re Logan,” he says, his tongue oddly heavy in his mouth, his chest still heaving.  The rise and fall of it draws his attention to the fact that his shirt is soaked through with sweat.  Sweat that’s started to cool, making it less than comfortable.  
  
“Okay, so at least there’s probably no brain damage,” Logan says as, no longer sounding quite so concerned.  He doesn’t drop his hands, though.  When he sees Charles glancing at them again, he says, “Not gonna touch you.  Not unless you want a hand up.  Didn’t mean to freak you out-- but usually, when you find a body on the floor of a gym...”  
  
The vague, dismissive wave scoff that rumbles out of Logan’s chest manages to cut a bit of the tension in the room.  Nevertheless, he’s quick to say, “Erik said I could come down here.”  
  
Logan arches a somewhat bored brow and offers up a slow, “Okay.”  But he quickly sweeps a look over Charles and asks, “How long’ve you been down here?”  
  
“A while,” he shrugs, push himself slowly to his feet.  
  
If he’d asked for help, he’s sure Logan would have given it, but as it is, Logan keeps his distance.  Charles is glad for that; he can still feel exactly where Logan had touched him, like it’s been burned into his skin.  Trying not to think about it, Charles glances back to the treadmill.  
  
He remembers running, though not for how long.  He remembers stopping.  And stepping down onto the floor.  After that, it gets a bit fuzzy.  Just thinking about it makes him dizzy enough for his knees to buckle a little.  
  
“Hey, hey--!”  Although Logan takes a step forward, he keeps his hands to himself while Charles regains his balance.  
  
“I’m fine,”  Charles insists, leaning over so that he can brace his hands against his knees.  
  
“Sure you are.”  It is, quite possible, the most sarcastic three words Charles has ever heard in his life.  “What you are is going to sit over there for a little bit, and drink some fucking water.  Slowly.  Otherwise you’ll just puke, and I am not cleaning that up.”  
  
For what feels like no particular reason, Charles finds himself laughing a little, not yet sure he can manage righting himself.  “It’s kind of nice to meet you, Logan.”  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who was wondering if things could get worse: Yes!

“It’s too soon.”  
  
“Try telling him that.”  
  
Logan takes the cigar out of his mouth to let slip a plume of condescending smoke.  Angel rolls her eyes and picks up the bottle of bourbon she and Logan have managed to drain by half.  After knocking back a little more, she huffs out, “I mean try getting him to  _hear_  that.”  
  
After she takes another drink, Logan relieves her of the bottle.  She lets him, not turning her eyes from the roof’s view of the lights of the city.  
  
“This isn’t going to go well,” she mutters, wrapping her coat a little more tightly around herself.  
  
“No shit,” he returns, just as cheerfully.  
  
  
  
  
“We know it’s not all legal.”  
  
Charles can’t help staring at Erik.  He doesn’t understand how the conversation had shifted from Erik talking about his day at the office to Sebastian’s business-- or, more specifically, Sebastian’s banking habits.  
  
All Charles can do is stare at Erik, because they’re alone.  Because there’s no one he can look to, no one he can cue to go get Sebastian, to tell him something’s wrong, that someone’s prying.  The knee-jerk desperation to protect Sebastian's interests is so overwhelming that it erases, for a moment, the fact that he can’t even talk to Sebastian.  He knows Sebastian’s personal number, there’s a phone in the kitchen-- but someone could find out.  Phone records and that sort of thing.  More than that, of course, is the fact that he’s not allowed to have unsanctioned contact with a previous owner.  
  
Everyone knows that.  
  
And he’s not Sebastian’s anymore.  He’s Erik’s.  
  
Isn’t he?  
  
Erik hasn’t touched him.  Not once.  Not ever.  Like he’s afraid to.  
  
There’s only one sort of owner who’s afraid to touch a Pet:  one who knows he’s touching someone else’s things.  
  
Sebastian’s played these sorts of games before.  Sent him to stay with friends for a few days.  Tested his obedience.  
  
It’s been a month of no press.  Of never being taken outside.  Of no one touching him, of people trying to convince him he can do whatever the hell he wants for no reason at all except to try to get him to be  _comfortable_.  Of his own bedroom and boring clothes and nothing to do but convince himself that he’s not Sebastian’s anymore.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he says slowly.  Once the words are past his lips, it’s like palming a salve to an exposed nerve.  This, this is a game he knows how to play.  Something blissfully numb trickles through his limbs.  
  
He can hear Erik talking, something about European banks, but Charles isn’t listening.  It’d be stupid to listen, lest something register in his recollection.  For the past week it feels as though his every emotion has been splashed across his face, and he doesn’t dare risk offering up some unconscious twitch of recognition.  
  
It’s just a game, he tells himself.  Erik works for Sebastian.  All three of them must, Logan and Angel, too.  The sting he feels, he buries, coaxing himself into an even, steady headspace.  Just Sebastian being thorough.  Just Angel playing her part well.  Nothing to get upset about.  
  
Erik’s stopped talking, and for the first time in weeks Charles doesn’t have to think about how to tilt his head or pitch his voice.  He doesn’t have to worry about where Erik’s eyes come to rest when they settle on him, doesn’t have to worry about pleasing a man unwilling to reveal any of his preferences whatsoever.  
  
“Sebastian never took me to those sorts of meetings.”  
  
“He took you to the office all the time.”  
  
“They’re large offices.  I knew how to keep myself occupied while he was working.  It was generous enough for him to take me to work with him; the least I could do was avoid distracting him when he had something important to attend to.”  
  
Something passes over Erik’s face, something he can’t identify.  Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter.  If Erik’s not really his owner, it doesn’t matter.  And... and even if, somehow, it is real, and he actually belongs to Erik, then...  
  
Maybe this isn’t Sebastian’s test.  Maybe it’s Erik’s.  Maybe he doesn’t really know any of the details to Sebastian’s financials and he’s just guessing-- just making sure that Charles can be trusted.  It would be stupid - wouldn’t it?  Stupid and irresponsible? - to trust a new Pet too quickly?  Sebastian had been his first real owner.  Charles isn’t.... 'new' anymore, he’s just new-to-Erik.  And Erik, if he  _is_  Erik’s, won’t keep him indefinitely.  Few Pets are ever that lucky.  
  
Erik’s sitting across from him now, atop the coffee table, elbows resting on his knees.  It looks like he’s about to reach out for one of Charles’s hands, but he stops short.  Charles isn’t sure if that should be taken as evidence of Shaw’s continued ownership.  
  
“Charles, he’s hurt people.”  There’s a strain to Erik’s voice that Charles doubts is false.  
  
His thoughts threaten to start spinning up again but he forcibly shuts them down.  It doesn’t matter whose he is, the only way to win whichever game’s being played it to play dumb.  To keep the secrets he knows.  To protect his previous owner, or to prove to his new owner that he can be trusted to protect  _him_.  It doesn’t matter.  
  
It’s all the same game.  No matter who’s asking, the questions have the same answers.  
  
“He’s never hurt me.” It's what everyone really means when they ask Pets about their owners' habits.  
  
“ _Charles_ ,”  and even the harshness of it doesn’t startle him.  While he might not be able to say that he misses Sebastian - not when he’s supposed to believe he’s Erik’s - he knows, down to his bones that he’s missed  _this_.  This armor he can pull up around himself when he knows what’s necessary.    
  
Like this, he can be bulletproof.  He can be perfect.  
  
“These are crimes he’s committing,”  Erik is saying.  “But they’re his actions, none of it can get you in any sort of trouble.”  Distantly, because it’s clear that Erik’s frustrated, Charles wishes he were allowed to press a hand to Erik’s cheek, to try to smooth the worry from his forehead.  He’s never enjoyed seeing other people upset.  “Charles,  _I_  won’t let anything bad happen to you.”  
  
“I don’t know anything that could help you.”  
  
  
  
  
He doesn’t see Erik for two days.  Or, more accurately, Erik leaves, and is gone, for two days.  Had he come home at all, Charles would have known.  Charles can’t sleep, not when every sound in the apartment might be the opening of his door, not when Charles can’t be certain who would be on the other side of it.  The prospect of being able to have a preference, between Sebastian or Erik, would have been enough to put Charles off of sleeping.  
  
It becomes easy to hide within himself. To go through the motions so long as he doesn't have to care, doesn't have to think or second guess.  Without expectations, it's easier to wait.  To listen to Angel without really paying attention.  And by the time Erik comes back, Charles has lulled to sleep the capacity to feel either relief or disappointment.  He can’t even remember why he’d found it so difficult before, to pick a book from Erik’s collection, and read while Erik watches the news without so much as acknowledging his presence.  
  
He could have gone on like this, carefully wrapped in a bleary fog to separate him from the rest of world, until something gave. Until Sebastian comes back to get him, or until Erik either comes to his senses or sells him. There's nothing else to do but wait.  
  
But Angel, it seems, will only tolerate being ignored for so long.  
  
“So, I guess Erik tried talk to you about Shaw.”  
  
Charles can’t keep in check the impulse to glance over his shoulder; he doesn’t see anyone.  
  
“Relax, Erik’s never come home from work early in his life,” she scoffs, as if reading his thoughts.  Never mind that his fears are probably painted right across his face.  “I figured that’s why you’ve been so... you lately.  Look, Erik can get pretty intense when he’s ‘on a mission.’  Don’t stress about it, it’s not personal.”  
  
As much as Charles enjoys it that Angel can essentially have an entire conversation without him needing to say anything, sometimes he has absolutely no idea what she’s trying to say.  
  
“I don’t really get tangled up in it-- bad blood between Erik and Shaw.”  With a shrug she adds, “It’s been going on longer than I’ve been here.”  
  
Finally, an escape hatch to any topic other than Sebastian.  “How long have you been here?”  
  
“Eight years,” she says brightly, pushing him a cookie.  Her expectant brow tells Charles that attempting to decline, however politely, would be futile.  “And yes, he’s always been like that,” she says once he takes a bite.  
  
“These are amazing,” Charles blurts out, an instant before he shoots up an embarrassed hand to cover the fact that he’s talking with his mouth full.  
  
Instead of looking mortified, Angel bites her teeth into her lower lip as she grins.  “Wanna know a secret?”  She leans over and opens the cabinet to pull out of the bin a box bearing the emblem of the bakery from three blocks away.  Glancing from the cookies spread across the drying racks, and the oven that still seems to be emanating baking-cookie-smells, confusion knits Charles’s brow together.  “It doesn’t matter that they’re the best oatmeal cookies in the city, Erik hates oatmeal cookies, because he’s some kind of freak of nature.  So he’ll come home, grumble about how the house smells like burnt cookies, and then I’ll guilt him into eating one, which he’ll hate...”  
  
Realising that Angel’s paused, waiting for him to fill in the blank, for reasons that completely elude him, he dutifully supplies, “Because they're oatmeal cookies.”  
  
“Right-- and then I’ll yammer on about how long I spent on them, blah, blah, blah, and he’ll get all huffy and yell, but he’ll still wind up eating at least three or four of them.”  
  
So.  Erik is a insane.  And Angel’s insane.  Perfect.  Whatever’s wrong with them, Charles hopes it isn’t communicable.  
  
“Why would you even bother going to all the trouble of...”  well, all of it.  
  
Angel makes a dismissive sound and puts the box back in the bin.  “I’m not going to actually go through the effort of  _actually_  making cookies just to fuck with him.  --oh, you mean why, with the whole thing?”  
  
All Charles can do is nod.  
  
“Because getting him riled up in general is pretty amusing, but this is hilarious, because... come on.  They’re cookies.  Who gets that worked up about cookies?” she says, like it’s obvious.  
  
  
  
  
“Angel, it is not a  _personal attack_  on your cooking ability--”  
  
They’ve been in the kitchen for fifteen minutes.    
  
Charles hasn’t moved from his seat in the living room, but he’d given up on actually reading ages ago.  He doesn’t know whether he should find the whole thing funny - because, well, they are just cookies - or if he should be worried for Angel.  She doesn’t seem the least bit scared of punishment.  For a while he’d thought that perhaps she was baiting Erik, trying to force his hand into disciplining her, but Erik just seems to keep trying to reason with her.  Even Charles is quite sure that’s hopeless.  
  
“It’s  _baking. **Erik**_.  They are two completely different--”  
  
“I just don’t like oatmeal cookies!”  
  
“You haven’t even tried them!”  
  
“I have already eaten  _two_ , that is more than enough to--”  
  
“They both came from the same batch!”  
  
By the time Erik start swearing in German, Charles finds he has to outright chew on his lip to keep himself from laughing.  
  
Angel sweeps into the room with a plate of cookies, holding it out for Charles to take one.  He doesn’t hesitate in the slightest, though he does wonder how she warmed them up.  It’s a nice touch for authenticity, he supposes he has to grant her.  She tosses him a wink and plops herself down onto the couch.    
  
“Charles likes my cookies!” she manages to yell around the half of a cookie she has in her mouth.  
  
“Shut  _up_!” comes the bellows from the kitchen.  
  
“Not likely!” she shoots back, flicking on the television and turning up the sound to a somewhat excessive level.  
  
  
  
  
“Angel.  Any reason for the sudden explosion of petulance lately?”  Erik asks, his voice unamused, but certainly quiet enough.  
  
“Dunno.  Maybe the weather.  It’s been too cold for there to not  _also_  be snow,” she says breezily.  But if she didn’t want to talk, she wouldn’t be sitting here, half-sitting on the far edge of his desk.  
  
“Angel.”  
  
“Oh, come off it,” she huffs, dropping her nonchalance.  “This is part of why I stick around.  You already know you fucked up, so we don’t even need to get into that.  And Charles... I don’t know.  I’ve never been around a Pet who’s been to Obedience School-- maybe that’s something to do with it.  Or maybe Shaw just seriously fucked him up.  But, whatever, you could tell him a hundred times that you’re never going to smack him around, but he’s driving himself up the wall trying to do his best to never give you a reason to smack him around.  Watching you put up with my nonsense without strangling me?  Now  _that_  says something about  _you_.”  
  
It’s a valid, albeit rather annoying, point.  Whatever progress had been made with Charles, Erik had - somehow - destroyed in a single evening.  Not that it makes the least bit of sense-- he knows Charles knows something.  He knows Charles is protecting Shaw.  On its own, the idea is a bit sickening, but when he reminds himself that it’s just because Charles is still afraid of the mere memory the man, it’s even worse.  
  
There may be, he is able to acknowledge, a small possibility that it grates at his pride, that Charles doesn’t think Erik is able to protect him from Shaw.  Better that than the prospect of Charles seeing him and Shaw in the same light, though.  
  
Proving his capability would be a bit easier if Charles were anything at all like Logan had been-- a snarling, swinging mass of spite giving Erik every reason he could think of to, were Erik any other owner, beat him within an inch of his life.  But Charles is like a living, breathing, fantasy incarnation of submission.  Hell, the first time Angel had called Erik and asshole in front of him, he could have sworn that Charles had looked scandalized.  At the both of them.  Like he couldn’t believe that Erik wasn’t dragging her out of the room by her hair, or something.  
  
Not that idea doesn’t hold a bit of appeal, from time to time.  
  
“So, I take it I can expect this to persist for a while longer?”  
  
“‘Fraid so, boss.”  She really does seem entirely too delighted about it.  “Oh, and the gym is great and all, but you need to find him a hobby or something.”  
  
“I’m not going to pick out a hobby for him,” he says immediately.  “If I ask him what he likes doing, he’s only going to give me whatever answer he thinks I want to hear.”  He’s seen Charles try to do it before, despite how much Erik has been attempting to guard his opinion on just about anything, and watching Charles try so hard makes Erik hate the whole pro-Pet world just a little more.  
  
“Well, don’t just outright  _ask_  him.  Be crafty about it.”  
  
“Why don’t  _you_  figure it out?  You’re here with him all day.”  
  
“Come on, that’s your job.  He’s only going to go along with it if he thinks it’s your idea.  And, you know, if you just stop talking about Shaw.”  
  
His job.  Fantastic.  Because he’s done so well with Charles thus far.  When he sighs, she squares her shoulders like she’s won, before slipping off the desk and heading for the door.  “Your job is to piss me off as much as possible?”  
  
She flashes him a grin over her shoulder.  “And aren’t I great at it?”  
  
Not to mention, sometimes he deserves it.  “I should give you a raise.”  
  
  
  
  
“Do you drink, Charles?”  
  
Erik can practically hear the moment when Charles stops reading.  Even though Erik’s back is Charles, he’s willing to bet Charles hasn’t actually looked up from the book.  
  
“When it’s offered.”    
  
Charles has stopped hesitating over his answers, which would be a good thing if it weren’t for the fact that he’s also reverted back to statements that have to come from some Perfectly Obedient Pet handbook, or something.  Erik wishes he could be certain that such a thing didn’t exist.  
  
“I’m offering,” he says, not really turning from the side table bar on the other side of the living room.  When he looks over his shoulder, however, Charles lowers the book.  
  
If he thought it might help Charles unwind to get him ridiculously drunk, Erik would have done it already.  Apart from his suspicion that it would help Charles towards nothing but a hangover, Erik doesn’t think it’s a good idea to be around a drunk-and-affectionate Charles.  Because when he imagines a drunk Charles, it invariably includes flushed cheeks, a lowered guard, and a lot of leaning on Erik.  
  
Not that he’s thought about it more than once or twice, at the most.  
  
When he passes one glass of scotch to Charles, he can’t help noticing the book Charles has today is, essentially, a textbook on thermodynamics.  His eyes linger on it as he sits in the armchair, rather than joining Charles on the couch.  
  
“You read a lot,” he says, half-hoping that using Charles’s own tactic of making bland observations might produce some sort of new reaction.  
  
Glass halfway to Charles’s mouth, he pauses, shuts the book, and holds it out to Erik.  “Did you need it?”  
  
So much for that, then.  
  
“No, it’s fine,” Erik says, unable to come up with anything else to follow it with.  
  
It had seemed like a good idea, when he’d first come up with it, to try approaching Charles while Angel was out of the apartment.  Whenever he looks at Charles, all he can think of are the hundreds of things he can’t say.  Shouldn’t say.  And whenever he tries to actually say something, he only ever seems to make things worse.  
  
“This is good,”  Charles mentions, saving Erik from his own mouth.  Erik even manages to avoid commenting on Charles’s faint surprise.  
  
 _Just talk to him_ , Angel had said.  The last time they’d talked, it hadn’t gone well.  And Erik isn’t about to apologise for something he isn’t sorry for.  He doesn’t like the consequences, but that doesn’t meant he can, in any sense of honesty, regret trying to find a way to tie a noose around Shaw’s neck.  
  
Half an hour of silence, and six more fingers of scotch a piece later, Erik says, “I’m going to get more books.  What d’you want?”  
  
For a second there, he thinks he sees Charles smile, but it’s gone just as quickly as he’d thought to notice it, so he’s left unsure.  And staring at Charles’s mouth.  
  
“I’m sure whatever you’re--”  
  
“No.  Knock it off.  You’re like Angel, about ordering take-out.  Just... just want something.  I’m going to get a bunch of books, and she wants that Harry Potter DVD box set thing.  So.  She likes children’s DVDs, and you like books.  So pick some books.”  
  
He attempts to tighten his grasp of his glass, but he finds his hands empty.  Somehow, his tumbler has made it onto the coffee table.  Sitting much closer to Charles to than to himself.  That doesn’t seem right.  
  
“Angel wasn’t here to make dinner.  I doubt you’ve eaten anything since lunch.”  There’s nothing melodic about Charles’s voice.  It’s just sort of soothing.  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
If Erik didn’t know any better, he could have sworn he actually heard Charles laugh.  
  
  
  
  
When the first set of Amazon boxes show up, Charles doesn’t think much of it.  Angel’s DVDs.  A book on the witch trials in Germany and a biography of Abraham Lincoln.  What appears to be a crepe maker.  
  
By the time he realises Erik has purchased every American president’s biography written in the past five years, he starts to suspect Erik had been more intoxicated that night than he’d thought-- Charles had only asked for the one on Andrew Jackson.  He tries very hard not to smile too much when he supposes that detail might have eluded Erik when he’d actually placed his orders.  
  
  
  
Breakfast seems to run smoother when Erik doesn’t say much.  There’s nothing new about his habit of skimming the news and checking his work email to check for impending disasters during the meal, but he likes to think it affords Charles an opportunity to be around him without feeling as though Erik is strictly focused on his behaviour.  
  
“You’re kind of a closet dork, aren’t you,”  Angel says before tapping her spoon against her lower lip.  Her recent interest in elaborate breakfasts has shifted to a fixation homemade pizza.  
  
The flicker of Charles’s smile in corner of his eye keeps him from shooting Angel a harsh look.  How it is that her teasing is fine, and his is somehow devastating, doesn’t make much sense, but Erik’s practically given up on trying to sort out the difference.  
  
“I’m told some people actually enjoy conversations about something other than celebrity news.”  
  
Frowning at his tablet, Erik doesn’t dare look up.  Is Charles joking with Angel?  Does he  _do_  that?  Probably, if Angel’s laugh is anything to go by.  It’s probably nothing new-- it probably happens all the time, when Erik isn’t around.  That makes sense.  It’s how things have gone, ever since Angel had installed herself as a permanent member of his household, of the network.  It’s only to be expected.  She’s more personable, spends more time with them, isn’t threatening.  
  
There’s no reason to take it personally.  
  
Angel makes a small sound of consideration.  “Pets like you-- they usually become tutors, right?  Once they’re older?”  
  
 _Pets like you_.  The words itch underneath Erik’s skin.  As if there’s any real difference between two people who are made into possessions rather than human beings.  But he reminds himself that Angel knows what she’s doing.  
  
“Some,”  comes Charles’s all-too-pleased reply.  “If we’re lucky, I suppose.  But I never managed to achieve any particular speciality.”  
  
“But you have a solid distribution,”  Erik can’t help cutting in, unable to listen to Charles malign the breadth of his education.  According to Charles’s paperwork, Shaw had him extensively tutored, which he’d thought was more an extension of Shaw’s vanity than anything else-- he’s the sort of bastard who enjoyed parading around his beautiful, well-educated Pet around at parties to impress his friends.  
  
Charles looks startled by Erik’s contribution to the conversation, and as if he needed any other indication to keep quiet, the sharp jab of Angel’s heel against his shin would have more than sufficed.  
  
“But who cares,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand.  “Everyone who finishes high school has a ‘solid distribution.”  Erik says nothing, despite his every desire to the contrary.  “I was always good with economics.  What would you have picked, for a speciality?”  she asks before taking another oversized bite of candy-themed cereal.  
  
Charles makes a downright playful scoffing sound.  “Economics-- never did much for me.  I was always quite interested in biology.”  
  
“See, biology’s crazy.  Bunch of random stuff all over the place.”  Angel says, turning gesturing with her spoon into something of an artform.  “At least numbers make sense.”  
  
“Numbers can make any sort of sense you want them to make,”  Charles returns with an ease that leaves Erik only feeling more out of place.  “Biology is a confluence of disciplines that explains the entire world around us.”  
  
Erik’s musings on exactly when Charles had become a voice-over narrator for the Discovery Channel is harshly derailed by Angel kicking him again, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from snapping at her.  But Angel’s trying to subtly nod in Charles’s direction - though it looks more like she’s experiencing some sort of muscle spasm - and it’s enough for Erik to catch her meaning.  
  
“If it’s something you’re interested in pursuing, there are tutors,” he says, not entirely sure why Angel’s suddenly rolling her eyes.  
  
All too quickly, Charles is trying to say, “I didn’t-- I didn’t mean to imply--”  
  
“Charles, you are not an idiot.  There’s no reason for you to not continue your education,” he says, tired of the conversational delicacies he couldn’t care less about.  
  
And it's a fucking mystery, how Angel manages to kick him in the  _exact_  same place every time.  
  
  
  
  
With each day, it’s harder to not engage.  It’s now impossible to drown out Angel’s chatter, and more often than not, Charles finds himself responding.  
  
Charles has lost track of the days, of how long he’s been here.  But with every passing day, it’s harder to remember what Sebastian’s hands felt like on his skin.  Apart from fleeting moments of doubt, he’s lost his conviction that this whole thing is elaborate test of Sebastian’s.  And that just makes it harder for Charles to keep his gaze from slipping towards Erik.  
  
Maybe it’s just because of Erik’s sudden interest in his education.  Three times a week, Dr. MacTaggert comes the apartment, and every day she does, Erik wants to talk about whatever they’d gone over.  It had quickly become obvious that Erik was just curious, rather than interested in interrogating him.  
  
He lets Charles ramble on topics that are fascinating, seeming pleased instead of bothered.  
  
Angel teases him, but that’s somehow become normal.  Angel’s sense of humour, Erik’s enduring tolerance of it, Logan’s absences that sometimes stretch for days-- although none of it is any less strange, it’s stranger, still, that it’s become familiar.  
  
  
  
  
“Now, you remember all the pieces move?”  
  
It’s not terribly hard to imagine why Erik seems a little nervous.  Apparently, when he’d attempted to teach Angel how to play, she’d become so frustrated that she swore off chess forever.  She even went so far as to ban the game from living room, which is why he and Erik are in the smaller sitting room.  
  
“I do,” Charles nods.  The first night, they’d only gone over how the pieces move and the rules of the game.    
  
If they’d spent more time on that than Charles had felt strictly necessary... well, however selfish it was, it had been two hours alone with Erik.  They’d been seated as they are now, directly across from each other, far closer than Erik normally permits, with a small side table and a chess set being the only things in between them.  
  
“I promise not to be discouraged when you win,”  he volunteers, pleased to see Erik relax a little.  “It ought to take quite some time before I’m able to win, so it’s only to be expected.”  
  
It makes Erik smile, just a little, but it’s enough to make Charles feel light-headed.  While it still feels like a tightrope act, trying to figure out when to speak and when to be silent with Erik, it no longer seems quite so impossible.  
  
And when Erik holds up his two closed fists - one containing a white pawn and the other containing a black pawn - he lets Charles touch his hand to determine which one of them will go first.


	6. Chapter 6

Full, perfect, pink-- no, not pink.  Red.  Full, red lips.  
  
Erik can’t get them out of his head.  Not when he’s in the shower, anyway, with his fist sliding along his cock because it's apparently gotten to the point where he has to bring himself off before going down to fucking breakfast.  
  
Yes, it’s fucked up.  It’s fucked up because Charles is fucked up in the head, and Erik must be even worse because he can’t stop picturing Charles’s mouth.  He can imagine it with a deranged sort of clarity, how those lips would look, wet and kiss-stung.  How they’d look stretched around his cock.  
  
Fuck, Erik needs to get out more.  It’s not even Charles he’s thinking about.  He hopes.  It’s just that Charles is attractive and it’s been too long since Erik’s gotten laid. And he sees Charles every day, so it's just lack of creativity on his own part.  
  
Of course, that first morning-- it doesn’t help, knowing exactly what Charles looks like, naked.  And for some reason his brain won’t let the recollection die.  It's the nudity, he's sure, and Charles's perfect skin.  Not the kneeling.  Erik doesn’t even _like_ submissive partners.  Even the idea, when Erik can't keep it from fliting past his mind’s eye, of letting his imagined-self pull a hypothetical, kneeling Charles’s mouth onto his cock doesn’t sit well.    
  
Because it wouldn’t be like that at all.  
  
He’d pull Charles up to his feet and ease him back onto the bed.  He’d wrap _his_ mouth around _Charles’s_ cock until Charles yanked at his hair, until Charles forgot himself and thrust up his hips to meet Erik’s mouth, until Charles _demanded_ release, until Charles came to pieces, panting out his name and--  
  
Too quickly, a throb of want spikes up Erik’s spine; his balls tighten and he’s got to brace his free hand against the wall of his shower as he comes.  He tries not to think about how much better it would be, to come into the hot cavern of-- of someone’s mouth.  Instead of his own hand.  
  
The water pelting down him feels cool against his skin.  
  
He really needs to get laid before he does something stupid.  
  
  
  
  
“You can make toast.  I’ve _seen_ you make toast.”  
  
Charles gives a small laugh as Angel pushes a paintbrush into his hand.  When she first announced that she was going to paint one of her bedroom walls with ‘an accent colour,’ he’d expected that meant Angel was going to hire someone to come in and paint.  Seeing as to how she dictates the grocery deliveries, it seemed sensible enough to assume she could allocate Erik’s money for work on the apartment.  
  
He’d been surprised to find himself roped into helping her tape off the ceiling and cover her things with protective plastic sheets.  
  
“That’s hardly ‘cooking,’” he insists, stepping carefully around the tray of boisterously purple paint.  “It’s just pushing a button.”  
  
“I guess popcorn sort of falls under the same category.”  She almost sounds disappointed, though for the life of him, he has no idea what about.  “No one at Shaw’s place ever taught you how to cook?”  
  
That she sounds more disbelieving than curious is the only thing that lets Charles see the question as harmless.  She never really asks about Sebastian.  Not directly.  Which is a relief.  Just these benign little inquiries about trivial details, stirred up by the rapid-fire tangents of her conversational style.  
  
Charles shakes his head, finding it easier to direct his attention to getting a bit of paint on the end of his brush.  “It didn’t--”  Well, there wasn’t much point.  Sebastian didn’t even like him to be in the kitchen.  Too many sharp objects.  Too many opportunities to get burned.  Too many ways in which his skin might be marred by something other than Sebastian’s discipline.  “That was always somebody else’s job.”  
  
“Were they good at it?”  The suspicion in her voice has Charles grinning.  
  
“Not nearly as good as you.”  
  
“Damn straight,”  she says immediately, laying down a long strip of purple along the edge of the wall.  “See, you get it-- dunno why Erik’s always got to be so thick-headed about things.”  
  
For a moment, he considers asking for her input, for some sort of direction - however vague - on what Erik wants from him.  
  
“Aren’t you supposed to do something to walls before you paint them?”  he finds himself asking instead, his own brush just inches away from making contact.  
  
Angel glares at the wall as if it had insulted taste in shoes.  
  
“Huh.  Knew I was forgetting something.”  
  
“Like hiring professionals?”  
  
“Oh, shut up.”  
  
  
  
  
By the end of the day, they’re splattered with primer and purple paint.  Charles’s arms are burning, but it’s not unpleasant.  And he could certainly do with a shower, but Angel has insisted that they’re both too tired to do something so practical, so instead he’s sitting on the living room floor - atop a patchwork of dark towels so as not to get flecks of paint on the couch or the carpet - watching some nature documentary.  
  
Angel, it seems, has a particular fondness for polar bears.  
  
“I’m starving.”  Charles all but chokes on a laugh, because they’re watching one of those adorable polar bears take down a walrus.  With the bear’s light fur and snow all around, the blood stands out a bit garishly.  “But I’m too tired to make anything,” she says, a bit distractedly, as she tinkers with her phone.  
  
For once, he’s genuinely a little concerned about what Angel has in mind for dinner, so he keeps his mouth shut.  When she grins a moment later, he’s no less worried about the possibility of something terrifying, like... seal carpaccio.  
  
“Erik’s working late, says we shouldn’t wait on him.  So.  Pizza?”  
  
Charles laughs, a little louder and a little longer than might be appropriate, but Angel doesn’t seem to mind.  “Have I told you, lately, that you’re brilliant?”  
  
“Never get tired of hearing it,” she assures him, patting his knee.  
  
It’s only once she’s already rattling off an order to whatever pizza delivery place she fancies that Charles realises that it hadn’t seemed strange for someone other than his owner to touch him.  
  
  
  
  
 _A tight, half-stifled attempt to cry out._  
  
Charles wakes with a start, the dark of his room blurring reality with his dreams.  It’s not entirely dark, of course.  Even with the curtains drawn, the city still imparts soft amber angles against the wall.  
  
He can feel his pulse racing along his throat, but it somehow doesn’t manage to overwhelm his hearing-- doesn’t dampen Charles’s ability to catch the next rough sound, the sound of what might be a struggle, the sound of an elbow hitting a wall.  
  
Rushing out of bed, Charles is halfway into the hall, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from, trying to figure out if it’s Erik or Angel who’s in trouble, when the next sound registers.  
  
It’s rough and it’s warm and more pleased than distressed.  No.  Not distressed at all. Encouraging.  And coming from Erik’s room.  From where Charles stands - one foot planted in the hall, one hand pressed against the ridges of his own door frame - he can see dim light bleeding out from under Erik’s door.  
  
He can’t tell how long it takes for those breathless sounds to find a rhythm.  All he knows it that they do.  The familiarity of the tempo makes it hard to breathe. It's not the sound of a mattress creaking, but the sound of skin against skin. Words made blunt and dull by lips pressed together.  He knows it isn’t Angel. If the other voice, with its soft, formless words, weren't so feminine, he might have been able to convince himself it was Logan. But it's not.  
  
It's someone new.  Someone whose voice he doesn’t know.  It’s someone else, in there with Erik.  
  
When Erik groans, it his Charles like a punch to the stomach, the weight of inadequacy crashing down on the heels of rejection's ache.  Erik doesn’t want him.  Not even for the sake of convenience.  
  
The absolution of numbness, Charles can’t reach.  He doesn’t want to feel this way.  God, he doesn’t want to feel anything-- it’s safer, not to feel anything, when there’s nothing he can do.  But he can’t shut it down and he can’t turn it off.  
  
And he can’t stop himself from memorising the low, guttural sound Erik makes when he comes.


	7. Logan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude before we return to our regularly scheduled torture.

_Four years earlier_

 

  
He remember sirens.  Never a good sign.  
  
But he’s not chained up, so he’s probably not in a holding pen.  Whether that’s good or bad is still up in the air.  His left shoulder is dislocated, but that probably happened during the fight.  
  
Logan hates getting stuck in a cage with new fighters.  They’re always pissed as fuck and too wet behind the ears to realise that winning in a dogfight doesn’t mean much, at the end of the day.  Doesn’t make owners any nicer and it doesn’t make the collar any looser.  
  
Whatever.  Nobody’s bugging him right now, so he’ll take the peace and quiet where he can.  Plus, a couple of ribs might be broken.  So trying to stand up doesn’t hold much appeal.  
  
“Look, I can get you guys to a doctor who’ll keep his mouth shut.”  The voice is new, but there’s nothing novel about the irritated tone.  
  
He’d open his eyes, but one of them feels swollen shut.  
  
“I don’t need a doctor-- okay, okay.   _He_ needs a doctor, but this wasn’t some backyard dogfight, Erik.  There were at least ten of them, and this one’s the only one who didn’t get picked up by an ambulance or the cops.”   Logan’s head tries to piece together where he’s heard that voice before, but his thoughts are getting muddy and sluggish.  
  
“Any of the owners get arrested?”  
  
“Some.  Not enough.”  
  
“Never is.”  
  
“Then hang onto this guy for a while, till I can get something that’ll stick.”  
  
“That’s not really my area.  There are some decent people upstate who could--”  
  
“Come on, you’ve still got Angel here.”  
  
“Summers, there were extenuating circumstances.  That was different.”  
  
Things go quiet for a while.  And warm.  It’s only when Logan realises it feels like he’s falling asleep that he makes an effort to avoid it.  Probably not a good idea.  Whatever it is he’s laying on - a bed, maybe? - is soft enough to disagree.  
  
“They’ve had him fighting for two years.  Before that, it was seven years doing brute labour.  You know why he got collared in the first place?”  Logan wants to know how the hell this Summers guy knows any of it but he’s not about get himself in the middle of whatever they’re arguing about.  “Medical bills, debt-- his sister’s.”  
  
For a minute there, it’s so quiet that Logan starts to think he’s passed out, but then the other guy’s muttering, “Cheap shot.”  
  
“Effective, though.”  Summers sounds like an asshole.  “Besides, it’s not like I don’t have an eye for talent.  Probably hates the Pet trade about as much as you do.”  
  
“What Pet doesn’t.”  
  
At least the irritated guy sounds like, maybe, slightly less of an asshole.  But not by much.  
  
“Seriously though, that doctor’s probably not a bad idea.”  
  
Fucking pair of geniuses.  On the plus side, the pain that comes from attempting to laugh pushes Logan right into unconsciousness.  
  
  
  
  
Despite the fact that there’s apparently another Pet in the apartment, it takes three weeks for Logan to meet Angel.  And she’s a goddamned teenager.  Wearing these tiny shorts and a man’s undershirt and a shiny little collar.  So Erik’s back on the asshole list in short order-- worse than whoever had picked him up after the cops had come in to bust up the Pet fight.  Worse than owners who ran that hell hole.  Sure, making people beat the shit out of each other was low, but at least they weren’t trading in teenagers, for fuck’s sake.  
  
If he’d had time to think about it, he maybe could have planned something a little more clever than just launching himself at Lehnsherr.  Could have figured out a way to get her out of the apartment.  Or could have least waited until he was a little more healed up.  
  
Though the feeling of Lehnsherr’s nose breaking under his fist is satisfying in a way Logan hasn’t got words for.  It only takes a few hits before Lehnsherr starts swinging back.  For a guy who looks like he’s nothing but skin and bones, he’s got a fist like a sledgehammer.  What’s really worrying, though, if that Logan’s been in enough fights to know when someone’s pulling their punches.  Logan’s bleeding and dizzy and staggering to his knees after Lehnsherr finally lands a hit to his bruised ribs.  
  
With as much as the girl’s yelling and screaming, he probably should have waited until she was out of the room.    
  
Probably would’ve been polite.  
  
  
  
“Jesus, fuck, I’m sorry-- I’m _sorry_!”  Angel’s babbling.  
  
Logan comes to with a start, one hand trying to swing again.  Except his hand - both of them, actually - has been latched to a drawer in the kitchen, so all that does is slam the door into the back of his head.  Which he immediately regrets.  No one else seems to notice.  
  
“It’s fine,” Lehnsherr insists through gritted teeth, not sounding all that fine to Logan.  It almost makes up for the throbbing at the back of his head.  
  
“Shut up, you don’t know that,”  Angel snaps, more worried that angry, but she steps away from where Lehnsherr’s sitting to pick up the phone sitting on the kitchen table.  “Hank?  Yeah, no-- I mean, I think it’s fine, but he looks like shit.  When are you back in New York?”  Lehnsherr reaches for the phone but she swats his hand away.  “No, he won’t go to the hospital.”  She stops talking long enough to mouth  _I told you_ so at Lehnsherr.  “Some bullshit about how the maniac’ll get in trouble, which is bullshit-- last time he just told the doctor that he _told_ Alex to do it and they bought it.”  
  
“Angel--”  Lehnsher snaps, but before he get out another word she’s rolling her eyes and all but storming out towards the living room.  Taking the phone with her.  
  
Whatever the hell that was, Logan’s glad it’s over.  Sort of.  It adds insult to injury, watching Angel have to pretend to be concerned about her fucking owner’s perfectly well-deserved broken nose.  They’re the worse sort of owners, the ones who want service with a goddamned smile.  
  
Course, now that he’s tied up and conscious again, it’s probably time for the beating to resume.  And right on time, Lehnsherr starts making his way over.  Except he doesn’t really look at Logan.  Just grabs a dishtowel and a bag of frozen frozen peas.  He’s still trying to figure out exactly what kind of sick fuck gets creative with _frozen peas_ when it occurs to him that Lehnsherr’s leaving the room.  
  
“She’ll be back to patch you up, once she’s... civil.”  
  
Takes Angel the better part of an hour to get ‘civil.’  Some of it’s spent arguing with the phone, but most is spent having some hushed conversation with Lehnsherr.  From what Logan can hear from the kitchen, it’s hard to tell which one’s trying to lecture the other.  
  
‘Civil’ apparently doesn’t exclude glaring at Logan, like _he’s_ the asshole.  She works silently, checking over his old injuries first before moving on to the new abrasions.  Though after she spends what has to be five minutes needlessly poking at his busted lip just out of spite, or whatever, he’s had enough.  
  
“What the fuck is your problem?”  he snaps.  There’s only one reason guys like Lehnsherr keep pretty little Pets like her, mouthy or otherwise, and here she is, putting up a front like she’s fine with it and Lehnsherr isn’t even in the damn room.  
  
“'My problem'?”  she returns, just as harshly.  “You’re the jackass who ballistic in the living room for _no reason at all_.”  
  
Which might explain why she hasn’t untied his hands.  But it’s not like he’d hurt _her_.  She’s just a kid.  A kid he’s snarling at.  Great.  
  
First chance he gets, Logan’s getting the hell out of here.  And taking the girl with him.  Even if she kicks and screams the whole way.  
  
  
  
  
They just leave him, bandaged but still tied up, in the kitchen for what feels like hours.  Logan’s fingers are going numb by the time the doorbell rings.  He doesn’t even get a chance to cook up any ideas about what might be in store when Angel comes waltzing back in with two bags of what appears to be Chinese food.  
  
Lehnsherr’s not far behind, but again, he’s ignoring Logan.  This time, it’s in favour of pulling out little red cartons.  Angel leaves him to it, grabbing a pair of scissors from a drawer on the other side of the kitchen before crouching down to Logan’s level.  
  
“You ready to try to not act like a lunatic?”  
  
When he says nothing, she rolls her eyes, but she cuts the zip ties from around his wrists, anyway.  After she takes a seat at the table next to Lehnsherr, she pushes an empty chair out with her foot.  The two of them just sit there.  Eating.  Silently.  
  
Takes a while for Logan to get that the chair’s for him.  Just about nothing about the day, thus far, has made a lick of sense, so he doesn’t see why it should start to now.  So, there’s no reason not to sit down at the table and reach for the nearest container.  
  
Rice.  Fuck that.  Once he finds something that looks like it ought to be meat, he grabs a plastic fork.  Just because the other two are using chopsticks doesn’t mean Logan feels the least bit obligated.  So they all just sit there.  Eating.  Silently.  
  
Until it’s just too fucking much for Logan to handle.  
  
“So, what-- you’re his little lapdog?”  
  
He doesn’t even have time to regret the words before Angel’s glaring again.  “Fuck you, asshole.”  
  
Doesn’t sound like a ‘no’ to Logan.  “Not usually what I’m bought and sold for.”  
  
Angel’s voice goes low, and razor sharp.  “Try to pull your head out of your ass for twenty consecutive seconds, so that you _get_ this:  nobody fucks me anymore unless **I** say so.  So keep your hands to yourself unless you’re interested in losing a few fingers.  I’m a _person_ , and the only one here who seems to think any different is  _you_.”  
  
 _Anymore._  It’s the word that sticks.  That makes Logan a lot less interested in eating.  And it’s queasiness that has him looking away from his food to catch the weird little smile Lehnsherr gives Angel.  
  
It doesn’t last very long.  Angel mutters, “Your nose looks stupid,” and it turns into more of a smirk.  
  
The confusion that scrunches up his forehead hurts like hell, but he can’t help it.  “So what the hell are you even doing here?”  
  
“I cook.”  It’s impressively indignant, considering the fact that she’s rummaging around in a take-out container with a pair of cheap chopsticks.  “Whatever, I _procure_ food.  It’s just like cooking, but less of a mess.”  
  
He’s entirely serious when he says, “You’re a little nuts, aren’t you?”  
  
Lehnsherr makes a sound that might be a little amused before muttering under his breath, “You don’t know the half of it.”  
  
Logan doesn’t know if Lehnsherr means himself or Angel, but he’s got a hunch it’s just as true for either.


	8. Chapter 8

The bliss of a routine is that it requires no active thought.  Charles can shower and dress himself and get ready to head downstairs without the need to consider any of it.  The sounds and sensations of the routine are nothing more than a background haze that he needn’t pay any attention to.  
  
It leaves his mind free to replay the previous night over and over again without interruption.  
  
On an entirely impersonal level, while brushing his teeth, even Charles has to admit that Erik’s methodology is exquisite.  Physical pain can be endured.  A beating would have been a mercy, next to this.  But it’s not as though he’s done anything to merit leniency.  
  
Had it been like this with Sebastian, at the beginning?  Charles remembers the pain and his own tears, but at least Sebatian’s lessons had been administered quickly.  Clearly.  
  
Maybe Sebastian would have been the same, had Charles had a previous owner.  With Sebastian, there had been no other allegiances to fear.  When Sebastian had promised to keep him forever, Charles had believed him.  Recklessly.  He knows better now.  He doesn’t doubt Sebastian meant it, at the time.  And he doesn’t doubt that Erik means it when he says it.  ‘Forever’ simply doesn’t last as long as most people expect.  
  
Of course Erik would want proof that Charles is really his.  Erik had asked for it, weeks - months? - ago.  And Charles had denied him, out of some imagined sense of integrity.  No, it’s not the integrity itself that was imagined, it was the idea that he had right to try to hold onto it.  So it’s only fitting that he be punished for such pretension.  Last night, he hadn’t understood, hadn’t been able to see what Erik was doing.   
  
Erik simply wants from him what any Owner would: Charles’s whole self.  After Sebastian, who had dedicated himself to making Charles the perfect Pet, it now seems obvious what Erik wants, what Erik needs to do.  Erik wants to ruin him.  No, it’s more than that, and Charles has to give Erik credit for the nuance-- he wants Charles to ruin himself.  Make it so Sebastian would never want to so much as look at him again.  Make it so Charles can’t even consider the idea that he might be able to please another Owner after Erik.  
  
It’s been silly, making such a fuss.  Trying to hold out.  Charles should have known better.  It’s just that, somehow, some small part of him had never really expected Erik to punish him so creatively.  But that’s what it was, last night.  A punishment.  And a warning.    
  
Charles passes through the kitchen without really seeing it.  Without really hearing Angel’s voice.  He makes himself some tea, not because he wants it but because it’s become a habit to consume something in the morning to sate Angel’s desire to feed him.  Tea will have to suffice because he can’t eat.  
  
He just can’t.  
  
Besides, he needs to get to work.  He needs paper.  
  
  
  
  
“You.  Are _such_ an asshole,” Angel bites out with a venom that halts Erik’s feet, the moment he walks through the front door.  
  
“Excuse me?” It’s low and it’s clipped.  It’s been a long day, after a late night.  He wants to assume she’s irritated that he forgot to drop her a line to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner, but that rarely merits such a murderous gleam in her eyes.  
  
Keeping her voice down, she closes some of the distance between them to ask, “Just how drunk were you, that you thought bringing someone home would be a good idea?”  
  
And now Erik’s meeting her glare with one of his own.  Better getting drunk and picking up some woman at a bar than coming home and letting his head get carried away with his cock.  
  
“My personal life is my own business.”  
  
“Not when you bring it into _our_ home.”  
  
“Why the hell does it matter?”  There’s no reason for her to be upset because he had sex in his own room.  Him bringing home women or men has certainly never bothered her before.  “What could--”  
  
“You were loud.”  What?  “Which is how I know you were drunk.  You were loud enough-- you woke Charles up.  He _heard_ you.”  
  
The cold, leaden weight in his stomach is just an awareness that things might be a little awkward.  Because Erik doesn’t feel _guilty_ about it. There’s absolutely no reason to.  If anything, he should be glad, because now maybe Charles will be able to believe that, even if Erik wants to have sex, he isn’t going to force himself on Charles.  Pointing that out to himself doesn’t do anything to diminish that lousy feeling in his stomach, however.  
  
“Erik, he just stood there, in, I dunno, in shock, or something-- listening.”  It’s the first time in a long time that something’s made Angel sound this uncomfortable.  But from the way she talks about it and the way she’s folded her arms over her chest, it sounds like he was kicking a puppy or something, rather than having sex in his own damned bedroom.  
  
“So what did he say?” Erik growls out.  
  
“Nothing, he didn’t see me-- and what the hell was I supposed to say?  I don’t think he’s gotten over the expectation that you’re going to sleep with him.”  
  
“Well wouldn’t something like this make it pretty fucking obvious that I have no intention?”  Honestly, he doesn’t see why Angel isn’t on his side of this whole thing.    
  
“All right, seriously?  At this point, I think it’s sort of more hurting than helping.”  
  
It doesn’t matter how reluctant she looks to say it-- it’s insane.  He can't stop himself from hissing out,  “I could fuck him and then beat him, and he thinks-- I think he actually _believes_ that the only acceptable answer is 'thank you, ' and you think it's a good idea to  _encourage--_ ”  
  
“Jesus, Erik-- I don’t.  I don’t know.  But you know how he is about you, the way he looks at you.”  She grinds out what could, in theory, pass for a sigh.  “And this morning, it was Zombie-Charles all over again.  He didn’t eat anything, he wouldn’t even talk to me.”  When she looks at him, it’s almost heartening, that he’s obviously not the only person out of his depth.  And when she speaks again, it’s barely a whisper.  “What do we do if he tries to hurt himself?”  
  
Erik feels ill, but there’s no way to unhear that.  Suddenly, not having worried about the possibility before makes Erik all the more furious with himself.  
  
“Where is he?”  Although he has no idea how to go about it, it’s his mess to try to sort out.  
  
After a moment of obvious debating, Angel finally says, “His room.”  He’s halfway out of the kitchen when she says, with a particularly malicious edge, “Don’t you fuck this up.  And no more bringing people home.  I don’t care if you’re quiet.  No more girls, no more guys.  Nobody.”  
  
Erik would point out that he’s not a fucking idiot, but he’s not entirely certain the facts are on his side at the moment.  
  
  
  
  
Normally, Charles’s placid mask just barely manages to conceal his skittish fear, but there’s something entirely different now.  Charles doesn’t look up when Erik steps into his open doorway; his gaze and his focus is fixed solely on the legal pad resting atop his folded legs.  The neatly made bed beneath Charles is littered with torn-off sheets of yellow paper, heavy with ink and Charles’s tidy penmanship.  
  
The brief pause in Charles's writing is the only indication he receives that Charles is aware of his arrival.  
  
Whatever half-formed speech Erik had slapped together in his head slips away.  He was expecting to find Charles broken.  Devastated.  If anything, the Charles in front of him seems all too solid.  Entirely resolved.  Even though Erik isn’t sure how or why, he can’t help thinking that this doesn’t bode well.  
  
Erik takes a seat on the edge of Charles’s bed, turning to face him.  “What are you working on?”  
  
Charles’s pen goes still.  There’s a thick, quiet moment before he reaches for two sheets of paper off to his left.  When he holds them up, eyes still downcast, he says, “These are all the names I can remember.”  
  
Bewildered, Erik glances down the list.  Some are executives for the international offices of Shaw’s company.  Some are socialites.  Some are lobbyists.  Some are bankers.  Investors.  Traders.  Dates, times, and locations of meetings.  Some at the office.  Some at Shaw's home.  
  
“These are from our international trips,” Charles murmurs, gathering a scattered spread of papers.  
  
Neatly bulleted overviews of business trips to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East fill the pages.  Names and dates and addresses of hotels and banks.  
  
“I don’t know any of the account numbers, but...”  It’s more than just resolution.  It’s resignation.  
  
“Charles, what are you doing?” he finds himself asking.  A small part of him doesn’t really want to know.  He doesn’t want this, what Charles is offering up, to be at all related to the night before, but Erik can’t pretend as though it’s unlikely.  None of this can be new information to Charles; he simply hadn't wanted to turn it over before, and it would be impossible for Erik to convince himself that Charles truly wants to do it now. It ought to matter more than it does, but Erik can't make sense of it when, for the life of him, he can't understand why Charles would want to protect Shaw in the first place.  
  
“This is what you wanted,” Charles reminds softly, and despite his best efforts, Erik can't help glancing over the first piece of paper.  
  
It’s not perfect information, but it’s more of a step in the right direction than Erik had been realistically hoping for.  But he’d thought Charles would have been happy to turn over information on Shaw.  Images of Charles, bright-eyed and animated, talking with his hands, crops up in the back of Erik’s mind,  and something twists sharply in his stomach.  
  
“Charles, do you understand why?”  he asks, nearing the end of his wits, wishing he could believe something like sense or reason was driving Charles’s disclosure.  “Why it’s important to me?”  
  
When Charles pointed avoids meeting his eyes, it’s more than enough of an answer.  He reaches over to pluck the pen from Charles’s grasp, trying to ignore the way Charles’s skin feels, the way he goes still at the contact.  
  
“Charles.”  He waits until Charles looks up at him.  “He’s a bad man.”  
  
Charles’s lips part, and a truly addled part of Erik’s brain wants to think about what would happen, if Charles leaned forward, if Charles pressed their lips together, if Charles started mumbling that, of course, Erik's right, and he's known it all along, deep down.  But Charles doesn’t.  He doesn't do any of those things.  
  
“Very well.”  The words are barely audible.  Charles clears his throat a little.  “He’s a bad man.”  It’s a flat, lifeless regurgitation.  Unshed tears cast a mocking immitation of brightness across Charles's eyes.  
  
Erik doesn’t want to think about why it makes him scared for Charles, doesn’t want to think about whether Charles sees any difference between him and Shaw.  Of their own accord, Erik’s hands cup themselves around Charles’s face, as if it’ll help hold him together.  “He treated you badly,” he insists, just in case there’s any chance in hell Charles might believe him.  
  
Charles blinks, sending tear-wet tracks down each of his cheeks before he parrots back, “He treated me badly.”  
  
Quickly as he can, and maybe a little too roughly, Erik’s thumbs brush Charles’s tears away.  What he’s about to do makes him sick with himself, but he doesn’t know what else to do.  
  
“Look, Charles.  I want you to do something for me.”  As if asking nicely makes it any less of a command to Charles.  As if he isn't just another owner telling a Pet what to do.  “If you don’t actually agree with what I’m saying, you can disagree.  I want you to.  You can tell me I’m wrong.  And if I ask you something, and you don’t know the answer, ‘I don’t know,’ is a perfectly acceptable answer.  Okay?”  
  
It feels like an eternity before Charles finally nods.  
  
“Do you think Shaw treated you badly?”  
  
Charles just stares at him, looking lost.  There are more tears, but Erik doesn’t dismiss them.  He just waits, until Charles says, “I don’t... I don’t--”  
  
And for all the world, it looks like it absolutely kills Charles to say that much.  
  
So.  Fuck it.  
  
Erik tugs, pulling Charles all too easily into his lap.  He wraps his arms around Charles and when Charles shudders a little, he just keeps on holding on.


	9. Chapter 9

Every muscle in Erik’s body feels stiff.  He really ought to learn not to fall asleep in the damn chair--  
  
But he’s not in the living room.  And it’s not his neck that aches, it’s his arms.  Because they’re still wrapped around Charles. Because they're tucked together, atop the bedspread of Charles's bed.  
  
This can’t be good.  
  
At least they’re both fully dressed.  That’s something.  However, he’s not lucky enough for Charles to still be asleep.  Despite his somnolent eyes, he’s clearly awake.  
  
And touching Erik’s face.  Carefully, but not tentatively, Charles’s fingertips trace along his jaw before the hand pulls away slowly.    
  
It’s not ‘Zombie Charles’ as Angel had called him, but Erik doesn’t know if he can see any scrap Charles’s personality.  Of what Erik’s thinks is his personality.  Erik wants to believe that Charles is the curious, intellectually ravenous, somewhat shy and uncertain person he’s caught glimpses of, but it conjures something like despair, to think about that person being trapped inside the Charles in front of him.  The Charles in front of him now is... fathomless.  Immutable and untouchable.  
  
As if arguing against the thought, Charles’s body eases closer to his own.  Erik’s trying to get his arms to work, to put a little more distance before the combination of just waking up and proximity to Charles results in a physical inevitability, when Charles speaks-- softly enough for Erik to hold himself still, lest the sound of shifting fabric drown out the words.  
  
“You’re really very kind, Erik.”  
  
He’s really not, and that Charles thinks he is ought to be profoundly troubling, and he’d have said so if it weren’t for the fact that Charles leans in, just a little, just enough to brush their lips together so softly that it’s torturous because it’s not nearly enough.  The press of Charles’s body warm against his own, the smell of Charles’s sleep-sweet hair, and the obvious arousal pressing against Erik’s hip, however, is entirely too much.  As quickly as he can - which isn’t quickly at all - Erik pressed a hand to Charles’s chest, gently forcing a little more space between them.  
  
His lips ache.  And he can’t even tell if there was anything more than that one wisp of a kiss.  Voice embarrassingly rough, as if his body’s response wasn’t bad enough on its own, Erik manages to say,  “We really shouldn’t do that.”    
  
For some reason, Charles smiles softly.  The focus of his eyes is a tangible presence on Erik’s skin as he leans back against the nearest pillow.  “You mean, you shouldn’t let me do that?”  
  
For fuck’s sake, he’s not even out of bed yet-- attempting to translate from Charles into English is a lost cause, though no more so than the hope of figuring out exactly which, if any of Charles’s many faces, is the real one.  
  
But without another word, Charles slips from the bed.  He holds Erik’s gaze as pulls his shirt over his head.  When the garment lands on the foot of the bed, it occurs to Erik that he should have fled the damn room the second Charles had stood up.  
  
Charles circles around the foot of the bed.  And then he steps into the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind himself.  
  
The water for the shower kicks on.  
  
And Erik’s alone.  In Charles’s bed.  With no idea what the fuck just happened.  But he’s starting to think Azazel has switched sides, and delivered Charles with express intent of driving Erik absolutely out of his mind.  
  
  
  
  
“You sound tired.”  That’s nothing new;  Edie always thinks Erik sounds tired.  Never mind that it’s been five days since he’d slept with-- _next to_ Charles, and it feels like he hasn’t gotten more than twenty minutes of sleep since.  
  
When she sneezes again, he takes the opportunity to turn the table.  “And you sound sick-- have you been to see a doctor?”  
  
“No, no, I’m not sick,”  she fusses before blowing pulling her head from the phone to blow her nose.  “It’s the dog--”  
  
“You got a dog?”  He doesn’t mean to interrupt, but he can’t imagine his mother with a dog.  She has parakeets.  Not a lot, just two, because she'd said it would be mean to have a bird all alone without another bird-friend.  Besides, it’s cold in Oregon.  The idea of his mother out walking some dog in the cold isn’t a pleasant one.  Not to mention, she’s allergic to them.  
  
“I told you, the girl from down the street had puppies.”  
  
“Your neighbor’s daughter had puppies?” he manages to say with a flat voice, even if he can’t keep a straight face.  
  
“Oh, you think you’re so clever,”  she scolds, but he can hear her smiling, too.  
  
“Ma, you’re allergic to dogs, you can’t keep it.”  Why she thought this was a good idea, he hasn’t got a clue.  
  
“They’re can’t take the dogs with them when they move, and this was the last one,”  she says with a sigh.  More likely than not, she’d offered as a last resort and was now stuck with a puppy that made her nose run.  “I tried taking those allergy pills, but they don’t seem to be helping much.”  
  
“You need to find someone else who can take the dog, preferably someone who--”  
  
“.... Erik?  Hello?”  
  
“Yeah--”  
  
“‘ _Yeah_ ’?”  
  
“ _Yes_ , I’m here, sorry, I was just...  Okay, I think I might know someone.  Someone who could take the dog.  It’s small, right?  Yappy little thing?”  Erik even manages not to roll his eyes.  
  
“Caesar isn’t ‘yappy.’  He’s.... talkative, but I don’t think Corgis are supposed to be ‘yappy’ dogs.”  Not that she sounds entirely certain.  
  
“You named him Caesar?”  
  
“Oh, Rachel named all of them.  I think one of them was named Pumpkin, or--”  She cuts herself off to ask,  “Erik you’re not going to make that nice man drive all the way out here again, are you?”  
  
“I pay Logan, it’s his job to-- “  Arguing about it is pointless, on every conceivable front.  “No, I wasn’t planning on it.  I thought maybe I’d fly out.  For the weekend, if you don’t have any--”  
  
“Erik, it’s Wednesday!”  He’s not sure how that results in her fussing at him.  “The house is a mess!”  Erik’s sure it’s not.  He can’t even tell her not to worry about cleaning before she’s saying, “So leave after work, and you’ll be here on Friday, yes?”  
  
It’s clever, how she tells him what to do and makes it sound like a question.  
  
  
  
  
“Just what I wanted to do this weekend,”  Logan grumbles as he drops a duffle bag just inside the door.  “Babysit.”  
  
“You’re not really going to sleep on the couch, are you?”  Angel calls, not looking up from the task of rummaging around in her truly monstrous collection of nail polish.  
  
Charles is glad Logan’s staying with them whilst Erik’s off visiting his mother - something Angel insists he doesn’t do nearly often enough - even though he knows there’s not much difference between Logan being here versus in his own apartment the next floor down.  It just makes Charles feel a little more looked after, rather than... say, left behind.    
  
No sense in being negative, he reminds himself, when it finally seems as though he’s making some sort of progress with Erik.  While Erik hasn’t touched him yet, he also hasn’t said anything against the small, innocent touches Charles has risked over the past few days.  
  
Actually, Charles would have been perfectly content, had Logan shown up a little later.  Preferably, some time after Angel had sated her absurd desire to paint Charles’s toenails emerald green.  From where he sits, they all appear to be more than sufficiently varnished, but she has yet to relinquish his feet.  So he sits, smiling a little in Logan’s direction.  
  
For his part, Logan just huffs out gruff, “Sympathies, kid,” and abstains from making any further comment.  
  
“Shut up, Logan-- Charles’s toes look lovely.”  
  
Logan makes an ambiguous rumbling sound from someplace in his chest while Charles blinks at what appears to be a bottle of pure glitter in Angel’s grasp.  While Charles is no stranger to pedicures, they’ve never involved anything more than a clear coat of something that was supposed to be good for his nails.  
  
“Perhaps a glitter topcoat would be a bit much, though,” he says, as diplomatically as possible.  
  
Angel looks patently unimpressed, though she doesn’t respond when Logan chuckles under his breath as he heads for the kitchen.  She waits until he’s rounded the corner to offer quietly, “You help me get him drunk enough to pass out on the couch, and I’ll put it on his toes instead.”  
  
“I heard that!”  Charles can't recall Logan ever sounding so close to alarmed.


	10. Chapter 10

“Caesar?”  Angel repeats, skewing a critical brow.  “Really?”  
  
Erik ignores it; if Angel thought Edie had named the dog, she’d have thought it was brilliant, but she probably knows better.  Just like she probably knows Erik hadn’t, as he’d claimed when he’d plopped the puppy into Charles’s lap, been obligated to take it as a favour to his mother.  Even Erik had to admit it was cute, despite the ridiculous ears and the short legs.  
  
“Now, realistically, I can’t take care of it.  I can’t be with it all day, so it’s not really fair.  To Caesar.”  He really wishes he could find a way to stop talking to Charles as though he were a child.  But when Charles has a lapful of drowsy white and ginger fur, it just makes him look younger by association.  
  
“Well I’m not doing it,”  Angel says, preventing him from trying to add anything else.  “What?  I mean, dogs are fine and all, but they eat my shoes and shed on my stuff.”  
  
“I’ll do it.”  
  
Angel and Erik both glance at each other before looking over to Charles, which he must interpret as doubt, because he immediately adds, “I can take care of a puppy.”  
  
A corner of Erik’s mouth draws itself up, because under the pleasantness of Charles’s voice, there’s something that sounds a little annoyed.  Annoyed, Erik can work with.  Lacing the words with a just a little doubt, he asks, “You’re sure you want to?  They’re a lot of work.”  
  
“Too much responsibility for me,” Angel adds, rolling her eyes as she makes a show of grabbing the remote from the coffee table and clicking on the television.  
  
Erik worries she’s maybe taken it a little too far when a shadow of uncertainty falls over Charles.  At the very least, Erik’s keen to seize an opportunity to keep his mouth shut, so he just waits it out, watching Charles’s fingertips smooth along the short fur between the puppy’s oversized ears.  
  
“I wouldn’t be able to take him to the vet,” Charles finally says.  “If something happened.”  
  
It would be sweet, if Charles didn’t appear so genuinely concerned.  
  
“I’d go with you for that.”  
  
“And there’s no yard.”  
  
“Well, dogs do need to be taken for walks-- that’s something you’d have to do.”  Shit.  Charles’s eyes drop to the puppy in his lap, his hands gone still.  Okay, so it’s unreasonable to expect Charles to go outside by himself; he’d probably have a panic attack, or something.  When the thought comes, unbidden, that Shaw does, sometimes, come into the city, a cold tendril of unease starts creeping up Erik’s back.  The idea of Shaw coming across Charles, all alone-- “Not alone.  Of course.  Logan would go with you.  For that.”  
  
He ignores the eyebrow Angel tries to hoist up in his direction.  She can do whatever the hell she wants with her eyebrows, because Charles doesn’t look thrilled with the idea, but he doesn’t look scared, either.  
  
The puppy wriggles itself around in Charles’s lap, snuffling at his palm, demanding attention and affection.  Charles is smiling by the time he says, “He’ll need a bed.  And toys, so he doesn’t eat Angel’s shoes.”  
  
He’s still smiling when Angel whips around and insists, “Don’t you dare even joke.”  
  
“My mother already got most of the stuff he needs; it should be arriving tomorrow.”  With that said, Erik has exhausted every conversational excuse he can think of at the moment to put off unpacking his weekend bag.  Not that he wants to just sit around and watch some puppy try to gnaw on Charles’s thumb.  
  
But Angel’s recovered enough from the threats against her own clothes to point out,  “He’ll need a coat.”  
  
Right.  He’d offered to get Charles one, shortly after he’d moved in, but Charles had been acutely disinterested in going outside-- so much so that Erik had worried getting one anyway would make Charles feel obligated.  Really, he should have just gotten a damn coat for Charles and then hid it somewhere.  
  
“And maybe something other than a uniform of jeans and t-shirts,”  Angel muses, turning an examining eye to Charles, who seems not at all unsettled by her pointed staring.  Without a scrap of sincerity, she adds, “Not that I don’t love the whole... you know... whatever-it-is-look you’ve got going on now.”  
  
Erik is about to say that Charles looks fine, but Charles’s expression goes so forcibly neutral that he keeps his damn mouth shut.  Charles hasn’t said anything about his clothes, or not liking them, or wanting something else-- but then, Charles wouldn’t.  Of course.  
  
“I assume that’s you volunteering to take care of it, seeing as to how I make sales people ‘uncomfortable.’”  Angel’s smirk makes it obvious that this was what she’d been angling for, anyway.  He just assumes that there will be some sort of service fee, to the tune of something new for her, as well.  It is, however, far - _far_ \- better that Angel handle anything that involves Charles changing into and out of clothing.  “And you should probably find some shoes that won’t soak through in the snow.”  
  
“And gloves.”  Even as she says it, she’s holding out her hand for his credit card, waggling her fingers in a fashion she must think is encouraging.  “Maybe a scarf, too.  Wouldn’t want him to catch a cold, right?”  
  
“Go to town,” Erik says blithely as he fishes out the proper card from his wallet, not at all needing to feign a dislike for clothing shopping.  “And once you’re done playing dress-up, how about you actually get him something he’d enjoy wearing?”  
  
Charles’s eyes dart back and forth between the two of them, narrowing with a suspicion he doesn’t voice.  
  
  
  
Charles has never, in his recollection, been to a clothing store.  Given the option of simply having someone bring a collection of clothes to a residence for perusal, he doesn’t see why owners ever bother, since they likely have the money to afford the convenience, anyway.  Sebastian had employed a personal shopper who had handled most of Charles’s clothing, except when Sebastian had wanted to watch him be fitted for something in particular.  
  
The people Sebastian had enlisted had been nothing at all like Sean.  For one, they’d always been silent.  And they’d never brought brunch.  
  
Sean and Angel chat back in forth in a way that makes them seem more like friends than anything else.  
  
“You know, it’s not normally true of most people, but I think you’d have more luck with women if you could just shut your mouth for a while, and then restrict yourself to three-word-answers at most,”  Angel says as her fingers tiptoe along the clothes hung on the portable rack that’s been set up in the living room.  
  
“I get women just fine,” Sean grins, pulling a trim, pinstriped vest and tossing it onto the armchair along with the rest of the assortment he’s designated for Charles to try on.  
  
“Yeah, you just can’t get any of them to out with you more than once,” she returns.  
  
Charles is content to let them chatter away as his fingertips skim across the rack, seeking more based on texture than anything else.    
  
He’s been a little apprehensive about the whole thing;  Angel and Erik bickering with each other is something of the norm, so when they appear to agree too much, he can’t help thinking that something’s up.  Plus, he has no idea what it is he actually wants to wear.  And worse, he has no idea what Erik wants him to wear.  No doubt, Erik would simply insist that Charles pick out whatever he liked, but that just puts him back to square one.  
  
The idea of giving Angel free rein, however, seems like a poor choice, when she holds a pair of leather trousers in his direction.    
  
“Put those down,”  Sean scoffs, and Charles instant likes him more.  He flashes Charles a smile.  “Fit’s not really important today.  We’re mostly just looking for what looks good on you.”  
  
‘What looks good’ sounds far less daunting that ‘what he wants,’ and at least Charles has a frame of reference for _that_.  
  
Once Sean seems satisfied with his first round of selections, he asks, “Do you have current measurements?”  
  
“They’re a couple of months old.  And with as much as Angel seems intent on fattening me up--”  
  
“Hey!”  she offers, in token protest.  
  
“Yeah, we should take new ones,”  Sean nods.  
  
“ _Hey_!”  
  
Charles just chuckles, tugging off his shirt and slipping out of his jeans.  When Sean pauses, measuring tape trapped between his teeth, to jot down the measurements for his shoulders, Charles catches sight of Angel’s startled expression.  He can’t help sending her a questioning glance;  surely she’s seen a Pet in their underwear before.  Besides, Sean is commendably professional-- barely touching Charles’s skin at all, except when necessary.  It’s not as though there’s anything personal about it.  
  
After a moment she blinks and rolls her eyes, and the moment’s gone.  “Honestly, Charles.  We’re switching you over to boxer-briefs.  No more boxers.  They make you look like a kid.”  
  
Which is ridiculous.  Not that he likes boxer shorts, but they’re what was provided.  “Oh, they do not.”  
  
“Like a scrawny kid,” she argues, before scouring the tray of fruit on the coffee table for the last strawberry.  
  
“I am not scrawny!”  
  
  
  
  
Erik doesn’t think it’s natural, for a dog of any sort to flop itself down, legs out to all sides, to take a nap.  According to his mother, it’s Caesar’s preferred sleeping position, which at leaves saves him the trouble of trying to figure out if there’s anything wrong with the animal while Charles is in the shower.  For the most part, Erik tries to ignore the oddity, but fiscal reports aren’t as distracting as he’d like them to be.  
  
“Yeah, he does that,” Angel mutters, walking around Caesar to sit across from Erik at the kitchen table.  
  
“Apparently, it’s not atypical,” he mentions, in case she was concerned that there might be something peculiar about Charles’s dog.  
  
A look of mild disbelief crosses over her face, but she lets the topic pass.  For a few moments she’s quiet, drawing up her ankles to cross her legs as she sits in the chair.  
  
“Have you ever seen Charles’s back?” she asks, as if it’s a perfectly normal question.  
  
Before he can stop himself, he’s replaying in his mind images of Charles stripping off his shirt.  He tries not to linger on the memory.  It’s somewhat heartening to realise he’d been fixated on Charles’s face, rather than anything else.  To think on it, however, makes him more or less sure that Charles hadn’t actually turned his back to Erik-- and it’s hard not to wonder it that’s not intentional.  If it’s not some manifestation of self-preservation, to never turn one’s back on a potential threat.  
  
“No,” he says flatly, not at all sure what she’s getting at.  While he’s no longer paying any attention to the proposed charitable donations for the next fiscal year, he fixes his eyes on the screen of his laptop.  
  
“Erik, I think he’s been branded.”  Her voice has gone quiet and her eyes are trained in the direction of the stairs, as though she expects talking about it will summon Charles.  
  
For Erik, it wouldn’t matter if Charles were suddenly standing right beside him-- it wouldn’t make him feel any less like he’d been punched in the stomach.  Or like someone’s pulled a plug from the bottom of his foot, and all the calm is slowly draining out of him.  
  
“I thought that was illegal.”  She hazards a glance back in his direction.  
  
“It...”  he tries.  The common branding of Pets has been outlawed, after so many were temporarily forced into the position of labour Pets by the last depression, some twenty years ago.  “Not if someone’s sold, voluntarily, by their parents.”  
  
It’s a practice not so much recognised as criminal as it is considered a measure of ‘quality control.’  Erik doesn’t even know why he’s surprised.  
  
“Why would--”  
  
“I don’t know.  It’s rare,”  he says quickly.  Angel had been sold young. For gambling debts, if her previous owners were to believed.  He doesn’t have any reason to believe she hadn’t been sold under duress, and he doesn’t want her to entertain the possibility of an alternative.  
  
She just stares and him and he holds her gaze until she nods.  
  
“Do we ask him about it?”  
  
It’s only her hesitance that keeps Erik from snapping out, _do **you** want to ask him about it?_  
  
“We all have a limit, for how many trainwrecks we can handle at one time.  So we’ll give him a while,”  he says instead, trying not to think of how he might have reacted, had he noticed a brand on Charles's skin without any sort of warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caesar, asleep on the kitchen floor:
> 
>  


	11. Chapter 11

“Please tell me you didn’t get so many button-down shirts because Erik wears them all the time,”  Angel groans, having taken it upon herself to organise Charles’s closet once the clothes arrived.  What system happens to drive her organisational style, however, remains a mystery.  
  
“They look good on me,” he says, glad that Sean had agreed.  “Besides, there are other shirts.”  
  
In fact, more clothing had arrived than Charles really thought necessary until he considered that Erik probably isn’t very interested in updating his wardrobe often.  Smiling to himself, he supposes that might have more to do with Angel than Erik;  she’d spent the better part of an hour trying to get Charles into an outfit that wouldn’t have been out of place in some 80’s glam rock band.  The idea of her attempting to browbeat Erik into trying on something similar is almost too much.  
  
To put an end to her grumbling, he offers:  “It’s not like I got any turtlenecks.”  
  
Her smirk echoes around the room.  “Yeah, all right, gold star for you, then.”  
  
Charles goes back to consolidating the tissue paper Angel has tossed all over the place when she’d started pulling clothes out of the boxes they’d arrived in.  For the moment, Caesar has abandoned his interest in attacking every scrap of it in sight, contenting himself to trying to find the ideal spot in the hallway to enjoy his dental bone.    
  
He manages to snag a thin, myrtle sweater before it can be absorbed into Angel’s attempt at constructing order.  As soon as he’s pulling it on, she says, “Just so you know, he’s probably not going to notice.”  
  
Even though Charles immediately wants to fidget, he just smooths a hand down the front of his chest, dismissing a winkle between the sweater and the t-shirt underneath it.  “Hmm?”  
  
The sound of her rummaging and sorting ceases, and because he’s sure she’s looking at him, he needlessly continues inspecting the new garment.  It’s a richer colour than the one he’d tried on, and this one’s more fitted.  Both adjustments seem like improvements.  
  
“It’s something at work, about the budget,” she says, too gently for Charles’s tastes.  But then she huffs out a sigh and goes on,  “It’s a big deal when it gets screwed up, and they’ve only got so much time to fix it.  He gets grumpy as hell when he’s worried about other people’s jobs.  You know, ‘cause he’s usually so chipper.”  
  
Sarcasm and teasing, Charles decides, suits Angel far better.  A corner of his mouth inches upwards.  “So, I shouldn’t be surprised if he throws something?”  
  
Angel’s laugh is sharp and cheerful, which he only thinks it fitting.  “I’m saying you shouldn’t be surprised if he tries to throw someone through a window.”  
  
  
  
  
Despite the slight chafe at the idea that Angel thinks she needs to break things to him gently, when Erik gets home that evening, he’s grateful for the warning.  Erik barely says a word to either of them in the ten minutes before his phone goes off, and then he all but locks himself in his office.  Angel turns up the volume of the music in the kitchen when they’re able to hear him yelling from upstairs.  
  
It’s more than they see of Erik for the next three days.  There’s evidence of his coming and going-- a tie left in a pile on the coffee table, the accelerated depletion of the coffee supply, reading lights left on till morning.  Apart from significant jump in how often Angel rolls her eyes, that she seems unfazed by the development is embarrassingly reassuring.  
  
“How about a green bean?”  Angel’s sly glance in Caesar’s direction doesn’t go unnoticed.  
  
“They’re good for people, not puppies,”  Charles says sternly.  Earlier, he’d caught her trying to give Caesar a meatball.  
  
“Oh, you’re no fun at all,”  she sighs, popping the green bean perched between her fingertips into her own mouth, instead.  
  
Caesar tilts his head up at her and gives a little whinge, as if in agreement.  Traitors, the both of them.  At least Angel’s attention can be easily redirected.  Charles casts a sidelong glance at the slow cooker that had appeared on the counter this morning.  “I thought those things were supposed to the work of the lazy-devil.”  
  
Pausing the business of spooning egg noodles into a tupperware container, she fixes a mock-glare in his direction.  “Swedish meatballs are the exception.”  Said meatballs, which it seems like she’s spent most of the day making, are piled atop the noodles.  “And when he gets like this, it’s like pulling to teeth to get him to eat something unless he already really likes it.”  
  
At first, Angel had tried leaving dinner’s leftovers in the fridge, but they went untouched.  Putting a plate of food out on kitchen table proved equally ineffective at snagging Erik’s attention, even when accompanied by a very threatening post-it note.  It makes sense, then, that Angel’s resorted to packing up food to take down to him.  The oversized portions is clearly meant to send some sort of message-- and the beer that’s settled into the canvas bag along with the food and the cutlery, he assumes is a bribe.  
  
“Here,” she says, holding out the bag for Charles to take while she tosses the serving utensils into the sink.  
  
What he doesn’t expect is for her to then start nudging _him_ towards the elevator.  He’d figured she’d be the one going.  
  
“Angel--”  
  
“When you get down there, just ask the first person you see to point you to Mr. Lehnsherr’s office.”  
  
As if he hasn’t said anything at all, she just pushes the button for the elevator and grabs a collar from the dish atop the nearby side table, carrying on,  “He’s going to whine, because the green beans aren’t swimming in sour cream, or whatever, but he really needs to eat something in the vegetable family once in a while, so don’t let him try to weasel out of them.”  
  
“But you said--”  Pulling teeth, and giving Erik things he actually wanted to eat.  
  
“Get him to eat the meatballs first, and then he’ll be pliable enough for green beans.  It’s like misdirection-- have you learned nothing from Penn and Teller?”  She very nearly sounds offended, though no less daunted about getting him out the door.  
  
“You talk about him like he’s a five-year-old, you know,” Charles says as she buckles the collar around his neck.  
  
“Well, the day he learns to feed himself properly, maybe that’ll change?”    
  
It’s such false optimism that Charles has to laugh.  “Not likely.”  
  
“Exactly.”  And with that, he finds himself in the elevator, the button for Erik’s office already pushed.  
  
  
  
  
Contrary to popular belief, Erik doesn’t enjoy firing people.  Especially not when they’ve got families.  Even when one bungled contract means that the entire budget has to be rewritten in a week.  
  
So it feels like a personal insult when someone has the gaul to be laughing outside his office.  Everyone ought to be operating in a state of _almost_ debilitating terror, lest anyone get the idea that this sort of thing will be tolerated, and Erik’s ready to put someone through a window by the time he flings open the door to his office.  
  
But it’s Charles.  Not the one who’s laughing-- that’s Billy.  Or Bobby.  Maybe it’s ‘Johnny.’  Someone from tech support, who’s vastly overqualified, considering the majority of his day is spent installing printers and recommending that people reboot their computers.  He’s laughing, and Charles is smiling at him.  
  
And Charles looks different.  Less like a kid.  But that’s not even fair-- put anyone in slacks, a dress shirt, and a vest and they’re guaranteed to look better.  Older.  
  
Charles catches sight of Erik and something about his smile changes.  Just that quickly, Billy-Bobby-Johnny glances over his shoulder.  After paling and spewing words at Charles, he slips out Erik’s sight.  
  
Despite the casual air with which Charles walks over, it’s hard to imagine anything short of an emergency bringing Charles down here.  
  
“What’s wrong?” he asks, because it sounds better in his head than _What’re you doing here?_  
  
Whatever had changed about Charles’s mouth before, it happens again.  
  
“It’s been a while since you’ve eaten,” Charles says, holding up a bag that he’d failed to notice before.  
  
The fact that Charles has no way of knowing that doesn’t make it any less true.  
  
Once they’re safely inside Erik’s office, and he’s seated at his desk once more, Charles sets to unpacking the picnic that has Angel’s fingerprints all over it.  The beer comes first, which Erik pops open immediately, using the edge of his desk.  Meanwhile, Charles sets out a container of meatballs over noodles and a small mountain of garlic-smelling green beans.  
  
Folding the bag neatly in half, Charles drapes in over the arm of one of the chairs on the other side of Erik’s desk before taking a seat, crossing one knee over the other.    
  
“I’ve been instructed to make sure you eat your vegetables.”  From the sound of it, he’s only just barely managing to keep him smile as small as it is.  
  
Taking a purposeful bite of meatball, Erik glances at the vegetable in question.  He’s not eating that.  Or at least, he sure as hell isn’t eating _all_ of that.  
  
“Have you eaten?”  he thinks to ask.  
  
“I’ll eat later.”  
  
Erik makes a derisive sound and starts poking through the right hand drawer of his desk.  With as much as he’s been living out of his office lately, there’s no shortage of individual, plastic-wrapped sets of cutlery.  When he holds out a packet to Charles, there’s no protest.  Not even so much as a blink.  Charles just stands and pulls his chair close enough so that they can both comfortably share.  
  
For a little while they eat in silence, making it impossible for Erik to simply inhale his food without feeling rude.  It’s not oppressive, though, as if Charles expects him to speak.  Maybe Charles has Opinions about talking with his mouthful, or something.  
  
After taking a drink of his half-finished beer, Erik says, “I know I’ve been busy lately.”  Why else would Charles be here, instead of Angel, if he weren’t feeling overlooked?  
  
“You’ve been quite busy,” Charles says immediately.  Earnestly.  “There’s nothing wrong with being dedicated.”  
  
“We haven’t played chess in over a week.”  Closer to two weeks, really.  He’d gone to see his mother, then there had been the matter of getting the dog settled, and then there’d been this mess.  
  
“It’s hardly--”  
  
“Tomorrow,” Erik says, wanting to mean it.  “Hopefully.”  He could spare an hour, surely.  
  
If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Charles’s cheeks are a little more pink than they were a moment ago.  
  
“I’d like that,” Charles says quietly, not looking up as the halves the last meatball with the side of his fork.  “I’ve missed it.”  
  
  
  
  
They start a game, the next night, and get seven moves in before Erik’s called away.  It only makes Erik feel worse, that Charles seems so genuinely happy over what little time Erik can spare.  
  
It takes them all week, but they manage to finish the game.  Even if it ends in a stalemate.  
  
  
  
  
The dog-walking thing, it’s not all bad as far as Logan is concerned.  Charles is decent company, doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with a bunch of inane bullshit.  
  
Plus, Logan likes pretzels.  And so does Charles, which is why they fall into something of a habit of snagging one each afternoon from whichever pretzel cart vendor happens to be in the park six blocks from the apartment.  It’s an unspoken agreement, that they never tell Angel about the pretzels.  
  
Technically, Logan’s pantry’s stocked on Erik’s dime.  Just so that the paperwork’s tidy.  He gets that.  But Erik doesn’t cover expenses like soft pretzels.  That’s out of Logan’s pocket.  Which he likes, too.  
  
Today, the cart’s run by a regular, who gives a wave to Logan and Charles once they crop up in his line of sight across the snow mottled lawn.  
  
“Don’t let him try to give you any hotdog pieces for Caesar,”  Charles reminds him, meandering across the dreary grass as Logan heads for the cart.  
  
He doesn’t feel the need to acknowledge that;  Charles is a little anal about the dog’s diet.  Allegedly, it’s sort of a big deal.  
  
Logan's turned down two offers of hot dogs when hears it, that sharp gasp that snags his awareness, but when he whips his head around to Charles’s direction, it’s Charles who’s standing there, calm as can be, with some lanky jogger by the arm-- or by the wrist, with a hand against his shoulder to keep him bent in half.  
  
“Jus’asec-bub,” Logan spits out before jogging over; the pretzel guy doesn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.  
  
He’s just in time to hear Charles say, in that pleasant, cultured little way of his, “-- do understand, don’t you, that it’s perfectly legal for a Pet to protect its Owner’s property?”  Like he’s not about to break some bastard’s wrist.  “That touching someone else’s Pet without permission qualifies as assault?”  
  
“He touched you?”  Logan demands, immediately glowering.  
  
But everyone ignores him-- Charles, the asshole, and even Caesar, who’s sitting near Charles’s feet, ears up, watching intently but not doing a damned thing despite the fact that his leash has been dropped.  Useless.  
  
“Get the fuck off me, you little son of a bitch,” the asshole spews out, struggling to keep the whine out of his voice.  
  
“No need to get _vulgar_ ,”  Charles says, his tone icy as he gives a bit of a push, and the asshole goes stumbling.    
  
Unsurprisingly, he comes back around, looking livid and eager to start swinging his fists, and Logan can’t help arching a brow-- he might not know what the hell just happened, but if the guy tries taking a swing at Charles, or him, he’ll be forfeiting most of his teeth.  
  
At least the asshole seems to get the idea.  Swearing under his breath, he goes staggering off.  Logan watches him go, watches until he can’t see the guy anymore, before turning back to Charles.  Who’s standing there, calm as you please, with Caesar scooped up in his arms, the leash back in one hand.  The dog looks no more concerned that Charles does, and for some reason, _that’s_ unsettling.  
  
“I thought you were getting pretzels,”  Charles says, mild disappointment staining his glance at Logan’s balled, pretzel-less fists.  After a glance over his shoulder towards the pretzel guy, who’s clamouring for Logan’s attention, Charles heads off in the direction of the cart.  He’s only a couple of paces behind Charles to hear him say to the dog,  “What a rude man.  But you did so well, you were so well behaved.  You absolutely were.  I didn’t have to worry about you for a moment.”  
  
Logan disagrees.  If someone’s grabbing at Charles, he wants the dog to go for his-- well, okay, Caesar can pretty much only get at someone’s ankles.  
  
“Hey,” he calls.  Something about the order of the universe seems back in order, because Charles stops and looks back at him, curious.  “Erik would want to--”  
  
“Do you really bother Erik with stories about every idiot you happen to come across?”  So much for the order of the universe.  
  
“No.  But--”  
  
“Then no reason to start now,” Charles insists as he sets a squirming Caesar back on the ground.  He frowns a little when the dog starts doing its little hoppy dance that means it really fucking wants a treat.  
  
They’re a couple of blocks from the apartment, pretzels finished and Caesar only having gotten the smallest bit of a hotdog, when Logan brings it up again.  
  
“We’re really not going to tell Erik?”  he has to ask, if only because it’s hard to figure Charles can actually justify hiding something from Erik.  Eventually, guilt about ‘being a bad pet’ will probably corrode his brain and he’ll tell Erik anyway-- and then Erik’ll pissed at Logan for not saying anything.  
  
“He’ll blame you,”  Charles says after a moment.  “Or he’ll blame Caesar for me being there in the first place.  He’ll just get upset at all the wrong things.”  
  
Okay.  He’s got a point.  Plus, Charles seems to like walking the dog, now that he’s gotten used to it.  Erik probably wouldn’t get rid of the Caesar, but he might try to figure out a way to get Charles out of walking him.  Which would probably be something along the lines of getting _him_ to do it.  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he kicks around the idea of telling Charles he’d done a good job.  Somebody ought to, but if it’s not Erik, he’s pretty sure Charles won’t count it.  “Angel teach you how to do that?”  
  
She’s always had a thing about breaking fingers.  
  
Charles laughs, like he’s said something ridiculous.  “Even respectable people can forget their manners, if given enough alcohol-- if I didn’t know how to occupy their hands until they remembered them, I’d be impossible to take to parties.”  
  
Which is pointless, because Erik never goes to gala-type things if he can avoid them.  Logan doesn’t know much about Shaw, but he has to assume he was the one who took Charles to the sorts of parties where drunk rich people were apparently in the habit of pawing at Pets.  
  
“I hate parties,” he grumbles.  
  
Charles looks downright offended.  At that.  Rather than being grabbed in a park or being manhandled at a party.  Because apparently, he’s got some kind of barbaric etiquette book where his brain should be.  “How can you _hate_ parties?”  he asks, despite the fact that he’s obviously trying to keep his mouth shut.  
  
Logan just rolls his eyes.  And Charles looks down at Caesar, like he’s worried that Logan’s going to be a bad influence on the little furball.  Apart from slipping him hot dogs.  
  
“Does...”  but the quiet word sort of dissolves once it leaves Charles’s mouth.  
  
Against his better judgement, Logan gives a grunt of inquiry.  
  
“Nothing,”  Charles says, picking up Caesar before walking towards the door.  Just that quickly, Charles is all smiles, polite _thank you_ ’s, and _oh, you really don’t have to_ ’s as the doorman pulls a hand towel from the pocket of his overcoat to help Charles dry off the dog’s feet before they go into the lobby.  The doorman just smiles, ignoring Charles's insistence.  
  
  
  
  
With the budget crisis solved, Erik takes Friday off and sleeps most of it.  
  
Once he wakes up, feeling groggier than seems fair, he settles in on trying to catch up on everything he’s ignored-- including going with Charles for Caesar’s evening walk.  
  
”You knew Eleanor Babish, didn’t you?”  he asks, shrugging on his coat.  Sure, he already knows the answer.  It seems the only way to ask the right question with Charles is to already know the damn answer.    
  
“Yes,”  Charles says, and it’s like someone turned a light on underneath his skin.  Something sad plays across his mouth before he kneels down to secure Caesar’s leash.  “Yes, I did.”  
  
It’s a reaction that, independent of any other reasons to do so, would be cause enough for Erik to know that taking Charles to the stupid fundraiser was probably a good idea.  Not that the fundraiser itself is stupid, of course.  It’s just that the parties associated with them are tedious, painstaking affairs.  But, apparently, Charles likes that sort of thing.  “The Foundation her uncle started, their fundraiser is next week.  Would you like to come with me?”    
  
Erik is silently grateful that Angel’s not within earshot, and therefore not dropping something or aspirating a drink.  
  
“Yes.  Please, yes-- I would,"  comes Charles's rushed answer.  
  
“It’s a black-tie thing,” he adds, wondering if any of Charles’s new clothes would suffice.  
  
“I can take care of it.  Or Angel can.  Whichever.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quickie before The Party

After Charles takes Erik’s second knight, he considers the board again.  
  
“You seem distracted.”  On any other night, Erik would have won by now.  Charles has been under the impression that things had calmed down at the office, but Angel tends to hear more about business than he does.  “If there’s something else you need to--”  
  
“No, it’s fine,” Erik says, the words quick, but without edge.  
  
Although he doesn’t contest being distracted, Charles doesn’t press.  He hasn’t yet figured out how, when one wrong move can have Erik avoiding him for days.  In some ways, Angel is right about Erik;  he needs to be taken care of, and the best way to do that is by not letting him realise that’s what’s going on.  It would be easier to give Erik what he wants, but sometimes it’s as if Erik doesn’t even know what that is.  Either way, it’s a situation Charles has virtually no experience with.  
  
When Erik is about to move his queen into clear and obvious danger, Charles caves to impulse and clears his throat.  Erik glances up and Charles points to his own rook.  And because words sometimes don’t work with Erik like Charles wants them to, he simply arches a brow.  
  
Erik settles his queen back to her square.  It isn’t in Charles to say that they ought to call it an evening, but it seems obvious that Erik’s thoughts are elsewhere, that there’s something else he’d rather be doing.  
  
“I have something for you.”  The silence of the room breaks so abruptly that Charles isn’t sure he’s heard Erik correctly.  “It’s under my coat.”  
  
Without really needing to, he points to the heap of black fabric atop the brown leather couch near the door.  As it’s closer to Charles, he takes that as an instruction to retrieve it, though waits for a nod from Erik before he rises from his chair.  It’s a compact box, but too light to be a book, that bears the mark of a retailer Charles doesn’t recognise.  
  
“For the party this weekend,”  Erik is saying as Charles settles back into his seat.  Charles can’t possibly imagine what he and Angel might have missed when they’d placed the order.  He must look puzzled, because Erik quickly adds,  “Or, not just for the party, if you want to wear it other times.”  
  
Entirely too curious, and certain that Erik will never get around to actually telling him to open the box, Charles lifts the lid, and he can’t keep his lips from parting.  
  
Against the tidy beige lining of the box is Turian collar.   It’s so neatly made that he can’t find the hinge that must interrupt the gleaming circlet of steel.  There are no scratches, no signs of machining, just the appearance of pristine, continuous metal.  
  
When he manages to look up, Erik’s lips are moving, which is the only way Charles realises he’s still talking.  “-- the time.  Obviously.  But, you _do_ go out.  To walk Caesar, and I--”  
  
Charles’s eyes fall back to the box in his hands.  There are a few collars near the door, all durable black leather.  Functional, minimal.  Generic, identical, and interchangeable-- there for either Charles or Angel to use whenever they step into the elevator.  Angel has explained that Erik doesn’t care for collars, so he needn’t be worried about wearing one in the apartment.  As though it’s an inconvenience.  
  
The rush of his pulse in his ears has died down enough for Charles to be able to tell that Erik is, in fact, _still_ talking.  About what, exactly, Charles can’t even begin to figure out, but his tone skirts the edge of apologetic--  
  
“Erik,”  he breathes.  He shouldn’t interrupt, but if Erik keeps going on, he’s simply going to ruin the moment.  “Please stop talking.”  
  
Glancing up again, Charles finds Erik staring at him, perhaps a bit startled.  Charles’s cheeks start to burn.  “It’s lovely.”  
  
It’s _his_.  From Erik.  And it’s beautiful.  Almost like jewelry, but decidedly not an ornament.  He’s smiling too wide, he’s sure, because Erik doesn’t even like collars, and he clearly only means for Charles to wear it when he leaves the apartment, but that couldn’t matter less at the moment.  
  
“It’s magnetic,”  Erik says, with just a bit of hesitation.  As though he expects to be reprimanded.  “So, no screws.”  
  
“Really?”  Charles can’t help his fascination and more than he can stop himself from lifting the collar from the box.  True enough, there’s no hinge, just two almost imperceptible grooves on opposite sides of the circle.  The novelty of it overshadows any disappointment Charles might have had over how easily it could be ripped off.  
  
“It’s--  Thank you, Erik.”  
  
Thankfully, Erik simply nods, and turns his attention back to board.


	13. Chapter 13

“... I look good.”  Erik sounds so surprised that Charles startles himself by laughing a little.  For what has to be the fourth time, he’s looking at himself in the mirror near the elevator.  The charcoal gray, Charles thinks, suits Erik far better than black would have.  “You’re better at this than Angel.”    
  
Now that, Charles thinks, is dangerous territory.  The last thing he wants to do is to encroach on Angel’s responsibilities.  “Angel has lovely tastes--”  
  
“Whatever.  I wanted you both in leather pants,” she grumbles warmly from the couch.  
  
Charles tries not to blanch as he recalls the truly ridiculous things Angel had attempted to pick out before he’d felt compelled to simply call up the tailors he knew and trusted, supplying them with both his measurements and Erik’s.  
  
But when Erik looks over to him and says, maybe even seriously, “Well thank goodness you were with her,”  it’s like fighting a losing battle to keep himself from blushing.  
  
He’s saved by Angel swooping in for one last inspection.  Charles, she declares to be perfect.  Erik, she insists on needlessly adjusting the knot of his tie and Erik appears to brace himself for a lecture.  
  
“Now.  Be nice.”  The lift of Erik’s brow is drenched with skepticism.  “All right, try not to be _mean_.  Don’t strangle anybody, no matter how aggravating they are, or how much you hate it when they’re mean to their Pets.”  
  
Certain that there’s no harm behind Erik’s light glare, Charles’s mouth draws up a smile in spite of himself.  He only just contains a chuckle when Erik accuses, “You actually get daily instructions from my mother, don’t you?”  
  
“We _correspond_ ,” she drawls, managing an imperial degree of smugness.  “Oh, but speaking of your mother--”  In lieu of finishing, she simply pulls her phone from her back pocket and switches on the camera.  “Come on, picture time.”  
  
“There are going to be plenty of photographers--”  
  
“Erik Lehnsherr, you are _not_ sending your mother a _press photo._ ”  She looks ready to throw her phone at Erik’s head if he so much as tries to argue.  
  
Charles only manages to take one step back to leave Erik room to be photographed alone before Erik’s saying, “Oh, no, no-- where do you think you’re going?  I’m not doing this alone.”  
  
Between Erik’s sharp smile and Angel’s grin, he supposes it’s meant to be more teasing than anything else.  Which is odd.  Erik, teasing him.  About anything.  But it’s impossible to miss how much Erik cares for his mother.  So it’s probably something to do with that.  
  
But.  That Erik wants his mother to see him, is... It’s.   It makes his chest feel tight.  
  
He can only hope that Angel doesn’t capture the glance he steals in Erik’s direction as they wait for her to take the picture.  
  
  
  
  
By the time they’ve checked their coats, Erik is regretting not having offered to just blow off the party and go someplace for dinner.  Charles might like that.  But he’d probably also agree just because Erik had suggested it, and according to Logan, Charles _likes_ these mind-numbing events.  
  
Ever since they’d been dropped off out front, Charles has been rather quiet, but surprisingly at ease; Erik would have expected the crowd to put Charles on edge, the same way walking down a busy sidewalk does. For Erik’s part, he's just barely resisting the urge to drink heavily.  This sort of thing always seems to attract a certain crowd of owners-- the ones who like showing off, who like decking their Pets out with jewel-studded collars, who like their Pets vapid and fawning.  Not all of them are like that, but enough.    
  
That Charles doesn’t immediately fall into that sort of behaviour only leaves Erik wondering if it’s new.  He’d never seen Shaw and Charles together, not in person.  There had been pictures, of course, because the media loves vain pricks like Shaw, but when Erik tries to remember, he can’t come up with ever having seen Charles draped all over Shaw, the way some Pets around the ballroom are clinging to their owners.  
  
Not that he wants to picture that.  
  
So.  The bar, then.    
  
He gets a martini for himself and for Charles, the only Speyside on the shelf.  It earns him a more genuine smile from Charles before Erik glances away, scanning the room for something that looks edible.  
  
“Charles.”  A woman’s voice, laden with surprise, catches Erik’s attention.  
  
“Mrs. Babish,” he watches Charles say warmly to the middle-aged woman, who managed to look a little flustered, despite the evening gown.  
  
“Oh, don’t be silly, Miss Elizabeth is fine,” she says, shifting her champagne to her other hand to give a dismissive little wave.  For a moment, it looks as though she’s trying to figure out how to place that hand on Charles’s shoulder, but the notion seems interrupted by the arrival of a man who manages to be both tall and stocky all at once.  It’s been a while since Erik’s seen Babish, but he’s easy enough to recognise.  
  
“Miss Elizabeth,” Charles corrects himself, smiling as he dips his head just a little.  “And Mr. Babish-- it’s lovely to see you both.”  
  
Maybe when Charles drinks he turns into a polished little socialite.  It’s the only explanation Erik can come up with, for how Charles has shed his self-consciousness.  
  
“Always a pleasure, Charles,” Babish says, sounding nothing at all like the cut-throat attorney Azazel gripes about.  Not that the griping isn’t tinged with a bit of admiration, but he hadn’t expected Babish to sound quite so friendly.  
  
“We weren’t expecting to see you tonight,”  Elizabeth is saying, which might be why she’s all but tripping over her words.  In what world Charles makes someone nervous, though, is beyond Erik.  “I mean, it’s been a few years since Sebastian’s actually come, but I suppose I just figured, with the--”  
  
Babish beats Erik to clearing his throat.  He maybe resents that, just a little.  
  
Without missing a beat, it’s Charles who plods right along.  “I suspect Ms. Frost is keeping him quite occupied.”  He even makes it believable, that talking about either of them doesn’t tie his insides up in knots or make him cry, or--  “Have you met my owner, Mr. Erik Lehnsherr?”  
  
Seeing Elizabeth’s face go bright red is more satisfying that Erik had expected.  
  
“Erik, Mr. Oliver Babish and Mrs. Elizabeth Babish, his sister-in-law,”  Charles supplies.  
  
Erik ignores Elizabeth for the moment, shaking Babish’s offered hand instead.  “I don’t believe we’ve met, but I’ve heard quite a bit from a friend of mine-- Azazel Romanov?”  
  
For a split second, Babish’s face falls and even Charles seems to tense, just a little, before Babish barks out a laugh.  “Perfect,” he drawls, releasing Erik’s hand.  “Only the highest of praise, I’m sure-- so allow me to return the favour:  nothing makes me loathe my job more than seeing Azazel on the other side of a negotiating table.”  
  
Erik finds himself grinning;  he’s not even sure he wants to repeat that to Azazel, given the inflating effect it’s bound to have on his ego.  “He’d be delighted to hear that.  Pity he’s not much for parties, or you could tell him so yourself.”  
  
In the time it takes for Erik to glance at Charles - who looks like a neatly tailored definition of contentment - Elizabeth decides to open her mouth again.  
  
“This is the first time you’ve actually attended the festivities, isn’t it?”  
  
There’s no good answer Erik can give, out loud, for why he’s here this year.  Before he can come up with something that doesn’t offend everyone in the immediate vicinity, Charles rests a hand against his arm.  
  
“He works entirely too much.”  Charles’s smile curls a little coy as he adds,  “Not that you know anyone like that.”  
  
And that’s all it takes to set Elizabeth to yammering on about how her husband is going to work himself into a heart attack.  She’s at it for nearly two solid minutes before Erik resorts to finishing off his drink in order to have an excuse to walk Charles over to the bar.  
  
  
The need-another-drink tactic works well, Erik discovers over the course of the evening.  And it turns out, he barely even has to talk to the most obnoxious people, with Charles running conversational interference.  Somehow, those conversations wind up being miraculously short.  Even more surprising is the fact that there are people worth talking to.  And Charles finds them.  And introduces them.  
  
Erik’s really starting to worry about just how much he’s had to drink, considering the only food available seems to be cocktail olives.  
  
He finds himself sitting in on of the chairs along the wall, engrossed in a conversation with a senior engineer for NASA, when he realises Charles isn’t next to him.  
  
“I jus’ think it’s got real possibility,”  Mr. NASA says, and Erik wonders which one of them has had more to drink.  And what they’re talking about.  
  
“Wait,” Erik says, holding up a hand.  “Charles--”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
For some reason, most of Erik’s body turns when he looks over to the side.  But there’s Charles.  He’s probably had a bit to drink, himself, with how red his cheeks are.  
  
“ _Charles_ ,” he grins, because there’s something nice about saying the name.  Mr. NASA clearly agrees, because he’s saying Charles’s name, too, and sounds just as pleased by it.  
  
Charles laughs, shaking his head as he comes closer, slipping one hand into his pocket.  The other hand plucks Erik’s mostly-empty glass from his grasp.  “Where’d you go?”  
  
“To have them bring the car around.  And to secure a cab, for your friend,”  he says.  Meaning Mr. NASA, surely.  Charles hands the glass to a passing waiter and slips his hand inside the inside pocket of Erik’s jacket, extracting the small metal case of Erik’s business cards.  He hands one to Mr. NASA, saying, “Mr. Daniels, in case you’d like to continue your conversation tomorrow.”  
  
There’s a fumbling exchange between Mr. NASA-Daniels and Charles that, he thinks, winds up with a trade of business cards.  Then it’s a round of good-nights, and Erik discovers he’s got his arm over Charles’s shoulders.  That they’re alone, walking towards the exit.  
  
When he looks over at Charles, it hits him, that Charles looks _happy_.  So happy that it makes Erik’s teeth hurt.  
  
And then he smiles.  “I think you might be a little drunk.”  
  
Erik fails to see the point.  Charles seems pretty drunk.  In an attempt to tell Charles this, while avoiding telling Charles that he’s a pretty drunk, the words rearrange themselves in his mouth so that they just come out,  “You’re so clever.”  
  
  
  
  
Watching Erik’s fingers fumble in their fight against the knot of his tie is terribly endearing.  Charles would have been happy to simply watch, if it weren’t for the fact that interceding gives him an excuse to crowd in against Erik in the elevator.  
  
“Here, let me,” he says softly, watching Erik’s hand go still when their fingers touch.    
  
But Erik doesn’t pull away, doesn’t ignore him.  He just stares, glassy-eyed, at Charles as his tie is undone.  As Charles pulls, steadily sliding the silk free from Erik’s neck.  His eyes drift closed when Charles slips the top button of Erik’s shirt open, exposing the hollow of his throat.  
  
“Better?”  It’s enough to get Erik’s eyes to open again, but this time his gaze drifts down to Charles’s neck.  He can practically feel it, the moment Erik recognises the collar.  
  
No.  Panic scalds at Charles's veins and he can _feel_ the moment starting to slip through his fingers.  But it isn't fair, it’s not his fault-- they’re not back in the apartment, he has to wear it, even if Erik hates it.  Desperation wraps itself around Charles’s throat, making it hard to breathe.  
  
 _A good Pet knows how to anticipate..._  It’s an old, half-remembered voice from the back of Charles’s head, but it’s quickly overtaken by Angel’s:   _Half the time, Erik doesn’t even know what he wants_.  
  
Charles’s free hand grabs the front of Erik’s shirt, pulling him down enough for Charles to crush their lips together, frantically fighting an instinctive sort of terror and praying, maybe - to Angel, maybe - begging her to be right.  
  
Erik’s lips part against his to haul in an uneven breath, but the hand that fastens itself in Charles’s hair doesn’t push him away.  The grasp holds him steady under the sudden onslaught of Erik’s lips.  Bruising lips and teeth scraping at the corner of his mouth and a sort of hunger behind all of it that banishes Charles’s trepidation.  With a moan, he parts his lips, and then he’s clinging to Erik just to keep himself upright.  
  
Dropping the tie, Charles blindly reaches for the wall to his left, cracking one eye open use to make sure he’s got his finger on the right thing before he pushes the Emergency Stop button.  Charles has only just started to find his footing, but he’s sure an interruption would shatter the moment, would cost him whatever ground he’s determined to gain.  
  
He meets Erik bite for bite, the quick nips at his lower lip sending little thrills up his spine, arching his back and forcing his body flush against Erik’s.  Erik’s lips break away as Charles nudges his hip against the growing erection he can feel starting to strain against Erik’s trousers.  Unable to process the idea of letting this stop, of failing when he’s _so_ close to getting it right, Charles skims his teeth over Erik’s jugular in the same moment that he rakes the blunt of his nails down Erik’s shirt, letting them snag on the small peak of Erik’s nipple under the fabric.  When Erik’s breath falters, he repeats the motion of his hand, but this time he lets his fingertips catch, pinch, and twist, just a little.  
  
Charles finds himself swallowing down Erik’s moan as their lips come crashing together.  Managing to snake a hand between their joined hips, Charles palms Erik’s cock through his trousers, grinding his own erection against Erik’s thigh.  There’s little grace to it, but somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter.  Erik doesn’t want _perfect_ , thank god.  Charles doesn’t even have to try in order to make this rushed and hurried, and he’s dizzy enough with his own success not to care-- because he’s on his knees and tugging Erik’s trousers open and, without any sort of preamble, wrapping his mouth around Erik’s cock without any recollection of how it happened.  
  
It’s as if his moan reverberates through Erik until it reaches high enough to force itself past Erik’s lips.  Charles is just barely hanging on to his own self-control by his fingernails-- fuck, but he’s pretty sure a verbal command would be enough to have him coming instantly.  So it’s safer to lose himself to the task of easing his lips down to the base of Erik’s cock, even if the feel of Erik filling his throat threatens his composure.  He’s practically trembling as he hollows his cheeks and tries to find a proper rhythm.  
  
He can’t piece apart what Erik’s trying to say when he tangles his hands in Charles’s hair.  The words can’t be that important;  he understands that Erik’s trying to be careful, trying to hold back the little hitches of his spine, trying to keep from just fucking Charles’s mouth, trying to relax his hands.  It’s very nearly ridiculous.    
  
Dragging his gaze up Erik’s body, Charles keeps their eyes locked together as he takes Erik down to the root, and then he holds himself there.  Lets his eyes flutter and moans, as best he can, around Erik’s cock, and Erik’s hold of his hair immediately tightens, sending a perfect ache along Charles’s scalp.  He drives his hips forward, forcing himself just a little deeper.  With an air of experimentation, he tugs Charles’s head back a little, and Charles doesn’t think twice about fighting that pull, yanking his own hair against Erik’s hold, driving his own mouth back down along Erik’s cock, and finally - _finally_ \- Erik seems to let himself go a little.  His fingers unclench but his hips rock out to meet the smooth, relentless glide of Charles’s mouth, his breath coming in faster, tight little huffs.  
  
When Charles slows, just a little, Erik doesn’t hesitate to correct the tempo.  “ _Fuck_.  That’s it-- just like that, Charles, just like--”  
  
Erik’s cock throbs, swelling just a little more against his lips and Charles drives his head back down in time to feel the pulse of Erik coming down his throat.  The feel of that, and Erik’s decadently wrecked groan, has Charles’s back bowing-- has his hands balling fists of Erik’s trousers to keep from squirming.    
  
Even as Erik slowly comes down, Charles’s own body howls for relief.  Ignoring such demands, however, is a well-practiced art.  Now isn’t the time.  No sense in pressing his luck.  
  
Placing his thumb at the base of the underside of Erik’s cock, Charles drags pressure upwards, drawing one last bead of fluid to the tip.  When he licks it away, Erik yields a hoarse sound and a hum of accomplishment blooms in Charles’s chest.  
  
Once he’s tucked Erik back into his trousers, Charles picks up the tie from the floor and rises to his feet.  Releasing the Emergency Stop, he turns back to Erik, who looks satisfactorily debauched-- shirt untucked, hair askew.  He doesn’t even manage to finish smoothing Erik’s hair back into place before he finds himself trapped between the wall and Erik’s body.  
  
Despite the way Erik’s distractedly nosing along Charles’s neck, the way too much of Erik’s weight is leaning against him, Charles gives a hoarse little laugh.  “Do you think you’re going to be able to make it up the stairs?  Angel will be terribly grumpy if she finds you passed out on the couch in the morning.  
  
Erik’s attempt at an apathetic response has Charles, all too fondly, rolling his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
Charles wakes long before Erik, but he doesn’t bother moving.  Moving is the last thing he wants to do when he has the solid warmth of Erik’s chest against his back, when Erik’s arm is cast possessively around his waist.  He could stay like this, just like this - warm and safe and _wanted_ \- all day.    
  
And it’s even easy to justify.  It’s Sunday.  Erik doesn’t have to work.  Caesar is downstairs with Logan. Well, perhaps not all day; Dr. MacTaggert will be coming by later, but that's hours off.  
  
So Charles lets himself simply enjoy it.  He closes his eyes and nuzzles into the pillow that smells like Erik, and lets himself drift into the weightless boundary between sleep and wakefulness.  
  
  
  
  
“Shit,” Erik hisses out, heart trying to claw its way out of his throat.  “ _Fuck_.”  
  
He knows he shouldn’t, because if he keeps making noises, Charles is probably going to wake up - it’s sort of a miracle that Charles hadn’t woken up when he’d wrenched himself out of bed - and that-- Erik doesn’t even know how to deal with Charles when he wants to bash his own head against a wall.  
  
In the few moments before Erik had allowed himself to open his eyes, he’d been bracing himself, trying to wade through the bleary scraps of the night before that he could remember, trying to figure out who he’d had the gall to call over in the middle of the night.  
  
He hadn’t even acknowledged the possibility that there might be something worse than breaking the ban on bringing people over until he’d opened his eyes.  Until he’d found his arms full of a stark naked Charles.  
  
“Damnit.”  The word slips through Erik’s clenched teeth before he steps closer to the bed again, pulling the sheet carefully up over Charles.  That he’s still asleep seems to be the only break Erik’s caught this morning.  Well, that and the fact that there’s a couple of advil and a glass of water on the corner of his dresser.  He doesn’t want to think about how it got there.  
  
What he needs is for the pounding in his head to stop.  He needs for his stomach to stop trying to turn itself inside out.  He needs to put on some fucking clothes and brush his teeth until it no longer feels as though some woodland creature has _died_ in his mouth.  And then maybe he’ll be able to think.  
  
But when he comes out of the bathroom - stomach emptied, teeth scrubbed, and jeans donned - the bed is empty.  
  
 _Fuck._


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another quickie, before another long one

Too much.  What little progress he’d made, he’s surely squandered by trying for _too much_.  
  
Charles had gotten Erik upstairs, somehow.  He’s almost gotten Erik into bed before Erik had pulled his collar off.  From the broken mutterings that made it past Erik’s lips, it seems obvious that Erik thinks wearing a collar means being like an animal.  It’s misplaced and simplistic, but the sentiment is... well, it’s quite perfectly Erik.  
  
It’s nice that Erik doesn’t think he’s less than human.  It’s worrying that Erik feels it necessary to say so.  
  
Maybe it would have been fine, if Charles had been able to just walk away, instead of taking liberties.  But when Erik’s hands had framed his face, he hadn’t even hesitated before pulling off his clothes and following Erik into bed.  
  
Snapping the lid of the coffee maker shut - because the espresso machine is Angel’s headache, thank you very much - part of him wants to be angry with Erik, which is only a testament to how far off the rails he’s come.  But Erik encourages presumption.  Rewards insubordination.  
  
Why _shouldn’t_ he have thought it would be okay, to sleep in Erik’s bed?  If Erik had wanted him to be perfect, he could have done that, if only Erik ever bothered to tell him  _how_.  
  
His knuckles ache from where he’s grabbing at the countertop.  Charles tries to let go, but he’s sure that if he does, he’ll scream.  Or break something.  Or something else, equally as futile.  
  
He hasn’t got any right to be mad at Erik.   _He’s_ the one who can’t manage to understand.  It’s not Erik’s job to spell everything out.  It’s his job to figure it out.  And if he can’t do that--  
  
then  
  
Charles can’t breathe.  He can’t.  He opens his mouth, but he can’t--  
  
The small of his back collides with the cabinets behind him.  As he sinks to the floor, the back of his shirt dragging itself up and exposing his back to the cold wood, he laces his fingers behind his neck and squeezes.  Not enough to restrict his windpipe.  Just enough so that he heels of his palms slow the flow of blood enough for him to inhale.  Just enough to let the details of the world around him lose their garish, jarring vibrance.  
  
Breathe.  Just breathe.    
  
Eventually, he gets dizzy enough for his lungs to cooperate.  
  
  
  
  
Charles’s room is empty.  His bed untouched.  A couple of drawers are open, but it’s possible they’ve been like that since last night.  Unlikely, though, given how tidy Charles seems to be.  If nothing else, he hopes it means Charles has put some clothes on.  
  
The living room is just as empty, as is the sitting room.  At first, the only sign of life in the kitchen is the bag of coffee beans and Erik’s MIT mug sitting out on the counter.  
  
“Charles?”  Erik only just barely manages to make himself ask.  
  
“Here.”  It’s a broken sound that flays open the exposed nerve of Erik’s guilt.  It’s come back to him, in bits and pieces, what had happened the night before.  He can remember leaving the party.  The ride home is a bit of a blur, but he remembers what he did to Charles in the elevator.  
  
Stepping into the kitchen, it wrenches at his gut, to see Charles on the floor, clutching at himself.  Last night, even before they’d left, he’d seemed so much older.  Now, in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt, he looks excruciatingly young.  
  
It hurts when his knees hit the floor, landing between Charles’s feet, but it couldn’t matter less.  Pushing away Charles’s hands, he uses his own to cup around Charles’s jaw.  
  
“What’d I do?”  he rasps out.  He doesn’t understand the furrow of Charles’s brow, or why it’s accompanied by Charles tilting his cheek into Erik’s hand.  “Last night--”  Charles’s eyes squeeze themselves shut, as if the outside world of sights and sounds is just too much to bear, and Erik stops short, not wanting to make it worse.  
  
“Dr. MacTaggert is scheduled to be here this afternoon.”  The even cadence of it seem entirely at odds with broken person the words come out of.  
  
What that has to do with _anything_ \--  
  
“So if you’d like to punish me, may I suggest calling her first, to reschedule?”  With the same voice Charles uses to recommend one movie over another.  
  
Erik has no idea how long it takes for his jaw to unclench enough for him to say, if a bit roughly, “I am not going to punish you.”  Confusion seems to prod Charles’s eyes open, just a little, and Erik has the gall to wish they were still clenched shut as he asks, “Did I say I was going to?  Last night?”  
  
Fuck, he hopes not.  He hopes, no matter how drunk he might have been, that he hadn’t also been stupid enough to even joke about something like that.  When Charles gives a small shake of his head, he’s able to exhale.  It doesn’t begin to wipe away the things he _can_ remember doing.  
  
Anything other than yes/no questions tend to screw things up, but he doesn’t know how to fit the question to the format, but he figures he can avoid the problem of making it a question:  “I want you to tell me what happened last night, after we got inside the apartment.”  
  
The elevator, he can remember, in bits and pieces.  He isn’t sure he’s not better off without the memories.  
  
“I led you upstairs,”  Charles says, sounding as though he’s bracing himself.  To his credit, he doesn’t look away, doesn’t skirt Erik’s gaze.  “I undressed you, then myself.  And then I got into bed with you.”  
  
Now it’s Charles who seems to be holding his breath.  Erik waits as long as he can before he’s sure Charles is going to pass out from lack of oxygen.  Gently as he can, he says, “And then?”  
  
Charles blinks.  A few times.  “And then I woke up.”  This time, Erik tries nodding to nudge Charles along.  “And then you woke up.”  
  
Something Erik wants talk balk at the simplicity of what he thinks he’s hearing.  “So we slept in bed.  Just slept?  Nothing else?”  
  
With Erik’s hands as they are, he can feel the muscles of Charles’s throat contract as he swallows.  But regardless of how pales he’s gone, Charles is still leaning into the contact of Erik’s touch.  “That’s all.”  
  
It would be easier to believe if it weren’t what he desperately wanted to be true.  “Why would you think that I was planning on punishing you?”  
  
“You were angry.  This morning-- when you saw me.”  
  
Erik winces.  He can’t ignore the possibility that it might not have mattered to Shaw, where he took out his anger, regardless of the cause.  Just so long as he had an outlet.  
  
The lurch in Erik’s stomach has nothing to do with his hangover.  
  
“At myself.”  Charles’s gaze falls to the floor between them.  “Charles, it’s not your fault.”  
  
Before Charles can meet his eyes again, the elevator dings.  It’s followed by Angel’s chatter and the jingling of Caesar’s ID tags.  The only way Erik resists swearing is the fact that the last time, Charles had taken that as a clear indicator he was about to be punished.  
  
Helping Charles to his feet, he quietly says, “We’re not done talking about this.  But you’ve got responsibilities.  And lessons.  So we’ll pick this up later.”  
  
To some extent, it’s entirely pragmatic;  they can’t have this conversation in front of Angel and Logan.  The bit about responsibilities and lessons--  well, his mother had said structure is important.  That it might be the lack of routine that sets Charles on edge sometimes.  
  
She might be right, because Charles seems to settle down a little as he nods, his posture drawing a little straighter.  And when Caesar comes bounding around the corner, leash and Angel’s voice trailing behind him, Charles doesn’t hesitate to smile, dropping down into a crouch to greet the overly enthusiastic little furball.  It’s a balm to Erik’s pride, that of all the things he fucks up with Charles, at least the puppy was a good idea.


	15. Chapter 15

Charles watches Erik grumble at Angel and Logan, watches him tolerate being teased about how he looks like a wreck.  He doesn’t understand why they do that, why they taunt when Erik’s clearly not in the mood.  He’s not even frustrated with Angel and Logan’s inability to make Erik feel better-- it’s that they probably could, if they wanted to, but they don’t even try.  
  
With a silent sigh, Charles grabs the tupperware of treats and sits himself down on the floor next to where Caesar’s eating his breakfast, pulling the sound of Angel meddling with the espresso machine over the buzz of his own clanging thoughts.  He lets himself fall into the routine of occasionally reaching over to interrupt Caesar’s attempts to inhale his food, pulling the bowl away, keeping it in his lap for varying intervals, slipping in a treat when he returns it.  Apart from a fair bit of decidedly interested sniffing, Caesar dutifully sits, patiently waiting.  
  
Thinking about the afternoon lessons, about the fact that Caesar will need a walk after breakfast - and that he should probably shower after that, and come to think of it, Caesar is due for a bath - lets the night before fade from the front of his mind-- taking speculation on what’s to come later along with it.  With other things to do, to focus on, he doesn’t have to obsess about it.  To let himself be distracted would only compound his already egregious misstep.  
  
“Why are you messing with the dog, when it’s just trying to eat?”  Logan asks, startling Charles the next time he reaches for Caesar’s bowl.  
  
Logan’s obvious disapproval would be more intimidating, if it weren’t so misplaced.  
  
“It’s good for them,”  he says simply, watching.  “They’re prone to food-aggression.  It’s supposed to help him learn nothing bad happens just because someone’s hand comes near his bowl.”  
  
“Seems sort of mean,”  Logan says, but this time he sounds more skeptical than anything else.  
  
“It would be mean to let him develop a habit for biting.  What if he bit someone who was trying to give him a treat?  Caesar’s the one who would get in trouble.”  Especially if it was some child.  Not that there are ever children in the apartment, but when it gets warmer, there will be more children at the park-- probably foolish children, who don’t know better than to just fling their hands at someone else’s dog.  
  
“Which is fascinating, really,”  Angel couldn’t sound more disinterested if she’d tried, but Logan lets the topic slide in favour of rooting around through the box of pastries on the counter. “But I thought we were going to get details about this party-- I mean, it looks like the two of you managed to get out alive.”  
  
Unbidden, Charles mouth smiles lightly.  The party, yes, he had enjoyed.  Feet firmly rooted in his own element, it had been easy to see how far from his own Erik was.  Erik might not like it, but he’d needed Charles, or he’d have wound up pulling out his own hair.  
  
Part of him wishes they’d never left, impossible though the thought is.  
  
“How about after Caesar’s....”  certain words, he’s found, are to be strictly avoided unless he wants Caesar to work himself into a frenzy,  “morning constitutional.”  
  
Mouth full of what must be half of a bear claw, Logan says, “You mean his--”  
  
“ _Don’t_ \--”  It’s a valiant effort on Angel’s part.  
  
“--walk?”  
  
As if struck by lightning, Caesar starts scrambling around, making little half-whimpers, half-barks before he goes shooting off towards the door.  
  
It’s all too easy to join Angel in glaring at Logan.  
  
  
  
  
Just because it’s Sunday doesn’t mean there isn’t work that needs doing-- and just because Erik wants to go to his office a few floors down doesn’t mean he is attempting to hide.  With MacTaggert coming over, it’s just easier.  Quieter.  
  
He knocks on the door of the room Angel uses as her office-and-shoe-storage-room before he heads downstairs.  
  
“Yeah?” she calls.  Not at all surprising, she’s sitting cross-legged on his swivel chair, chewing on a pen.  From this angle, there’s no telling what she’s working on.  It could just as easily be coordinating forged documentation for assimilating pets out west, scheduling to have one of the cars’ oil changed, or looking at pictures of cats doing ridiculous things.  Erik has learned not to ask.  
  
But when she looks up, she almost inhales her pen in an immediately aborted attempt to laugh.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing,” she grins shamelessly.  “It’s just a nice turtelneck.”  
  
She’s mocking him, but ‘why’ ranks very low on the details of day that concern Erik.  
  
“I’m going to be downstairs for a while.”  
  
“You know Moira’s going to be here soon.”  
  
“No, I mean the offices, downstairs.”  Not the sitting room, obviously.  
  
Something shifts behind Angel’s eyes and she tosses the pen down onto her notebook.  “Everyone’s okay?”  
  
“As far as I know-- why?”  Usually it takes a good deal more than Erik going in on a Sunday for her to think something might actually be wrong.  Besides, if anyone in their network were in trouble, she’d be among the first to hear about it.  
  
“Azazel called.  Asked if you were in, wants to see you today.”  
  
“Probably to do with Shaw,” he says after a moment’s thought.  His nerves prickle with an anticipation best left ignored.  For the moment, anyway.  “If it were an emergency, he wouldn’t waste the time.”  
  
That much seems to placate Angel.  Or it least, it puts her enough at ease to merit a shrug of concession.  
  
“Call him back-- let him know where I’ll be,”  Erik says as he heads for the door.  He doesn’t make it out in the hallway before Angel fires off her best mock-salute.  
  
  
  
  
Erik doesn’t even have to open the file on his desk.  Azazel just hands him stacks of briefing memos and invoices and tailing reports to torture him with minutiae.  If he had good news, little between heaven and earth would have been able to stop him from gloating.  
  
“Would it cause you some kind of physical harm to actually show up with good news once in a while?”  
  
“This is nothing but good news,” Azazel scoffs, so cheerful that it grates at Erik.  “Progress is good news.”  
  
“No, good news is you coming in and saying you’ve actually got something that can be prosecuted,”  he growls.    
  
This whole stupid thing had been Azazel’s grand plan-- but then Charles had been so.... reluctant.  And ultimately, hadn’t been able to provide anything that would tie a neat little bow around Shaw’s neck.  And it gnaws at Erik’s patience, that he has to wonder if Charles might _still_ be protecting the bastard.  
  
“I am not one of your employees, Erik.”  There’s a edge thinly veiled in the velvet of Azazel’s voice.  “Progress is good.  You do not want something that he can be prosecuted for-- we have no shortage of that.  What you want is something for which he could be convicted, no?”  
  
Sighing through his nose, Erik leans back in his chair and does his best to wipe the scowl off his face.  This seems to content Azazel, who settles into the chair across from Erik a little more comfortably.  Reluctantly, he supposes that it’s sporting of Azazel to leave it at that.  In an attempt to show that it doesn’t go unappreciated, Erik mentions,  “Babish hates your guts.”  
  
Azazel’s smile slices across his face.  “Am I to be surprised by this?”  Of course not, seems to be the unspoken answer hanging in the air as Azazel crosses one leg over the other.  “But you did go to his party, last night, did you not?”  
  
From some hidden sleeve of his briefcase, Azazel slips free a folded-over portion of the style section, dropping it on Erik’s desk.  Facing up is a picture of himself, shaking hands with Babish, with Charles just to his left.  Elizabeth seems to have been cropped out.  
  
“Good that you’re finally showing yourself in public.  Makes business easier when you have a bit of social currency.”  At least Azazel makes a slightly better case for it than Angel does.  “And giving everyone a bit of proof that Shaw’s little pet is still alive.”  
  
At that, Erik narrows his eyes.  He has to all but chew on his tongue from pointing out that Charles isn’t Shaw’s anymore.  
  
“People do talk, you know.  Everyone knew Frost wanted him gone.”  With a bored flutter of his hand, Azazel seems to brush aside a deluge of rumours that must have to do with Frost arranging for some sort of ‘accident.’  It’s part of why Erik tries to keep out of having a social life-- absent details, wild speculation gets hysterical, and Erik’s never been fond of yielding details.  “But it is hardly a secret you bought him.  Mostly, people just wonder what you must be doing all day and night, keeping him locked up here.”  
  
Azazel’s leer makes it perfectly obvious what people think.  
  
A flash of guilt and a wave of resentment push out a snarled, “I’m not doing _anything_.”  
  
Entirely unfazed, Azazel simply lifts his palms in mock surrender.  “I know this.  You know this.”  The pointed, rust-brown fixing of Azazel’s eyes on him makes Erik wonder just how much he can see in a single glance.  “But Shaw always likes it when people are fascinated by his things.  People are used to seeing him.”  
  
Of course.  Because Shaw’s the sort of egomaniac who would only be pleased by people wanting him or wanting to be him.  No doubt, that would include making sure the trappings of his life were as enviable as possible.  Not that Shaw had invented the notion of a 'celebrity-Pet,' but he's certainly been happy to exploit it.  
  
“You just want me to go to that ridiculous party your firm throws.”  
  
Azazel’s chuckle is telling enough.  He stands, picking up his briefcase.  “As your lawyer, I strongly recommend it.”  
  
Erik mutters under his breath about how Azazel just wants him to show up with Charles, and be photographed.  
  
Reclaiming his paper, Azazel shrugs as he picks up his coat from the back of the adjacent chair.  “He is nice to photograph.”  He’s halfway to the door when he adds, “And he dressed you well.”  
  
That, he’s sure, is just a blind guess.  “How do you know I didn’t pick that out?”  
  
A snort of a laugh is all he gets before Azazel lets himself out.


	16. Chapter 16

Having the day to think about it has probably been helpful.  Or it should have been.  Mostly, after the meeting with Azazel, he’s left to stew in trying to sort out whether or not he has been keeping Charles away from the rest of the world for good reason, or if there are ulterior motives behind it.  
  
He wants to believe better of himself.  He can admit being attracted to Charles.  But he’s not even sure it’s possible for mutual attraction to exist between an owner and a Pet-- especially, loathe as he is to acknowledge it, a Pet like Charles.  
  
‘Personal Pet’ has a pretty loose definition.  Some people use them as PA’s, or as para-professionals.  Some people use them as nannies or tutors for their children.  Some, yes, are used for sex, but Erik doesn’t know how to describe the sort of Pet Charles had been to Shaw.    
  
It might be easier to sort out of if every press photo an internet search had turned up hadn’t been of Shaw parading Charles around like some trophy-spouse, rather than some sub-human shadow.  
  
In his defence, he’d spent less than an hour trying to figure something out from the internet.  
  
When a soft rapping sounds against his bedroom door, it’s almost a relief.  Except, he wishes he’d thought of someplace other than his bedroom for this.  
  
“Come it,” he says anyway.  Better here than somewhere Angel might walk in.  
  
Ages ago, it had seemed like an extravagance, to have a bedroom large enough to also contain a seating area-- at the moment, however, he’s just glad to have a couple of leather chairs that provide seating other than his bed.  As he watches Charles take the seat next to him, he idly wonders if he can just command Charles to relax.  
  
It seems counterintuitive.  
  
“You’re not in trouble,” he says, hoping Charles hasn’t been this wound up all day.  He’d only put things off because he’d thought it was supposed to be good for Charles, to try to be consistent.  To try to show him that Erik being upset didn’t mean the sky was going to come crashing down on his head.  “I’m not upset with you.”  
  
It doesn’t seem to help.  Charles nods, but just keeps staring at the floor, his hands clasped together, trapped between his knees.  
  
Nothing for it, then, except to bite the bullet, and hope he can nail a fundamental issue before the conversation develops a life of its own.  
  
“Why are you scared?”  Before Charles has much of a chance to answer, his aims to clarify:  “I know you are.  You’re afraid I’ll punish you.  And sometimes it seems like you’re afraid I won’t.”  
  
Of course, it almost always hurt, to go jumping into the deep end, head first, but it’s usually not without its reward.  Every second that Charles stays silent, however, eats away at his certainty.  
  
“I don’t know what you want from me,”  Charles whispers, at last, the sound barely audible.  
  
“Charles,” he sighs, almost as softly.  He doesn’t know how to make it any more clear, how to assure Charles that no one here is going to make him do anything.  “I don’t want anything from you.”  
  
Something beneath Charles’s surface seems to fracture.  One hand scrubs at the back of neck, the shifts to rub along the side of it.  “You’re going to sell me.”    
  
Erik has no idea where Charles comes up with these ideas, let alone how he can seem so utterly sure of them.  
  
“Why would I sell you?”  he can’t keep himself from asking, even though he’s pretty sure he’s in for some laundry list of Charles’s imagined flaws, or quotes from one of Shaw’s rants about an owner’s prerogative.  
  
“Because you don’t want to keep me,” Charles says, his eyes falling shut as the words slip past his lips.  “You take no pleasure in looking at me.  And you have no desire to touch me.”  
  
Of course he doesn’t want to ‘keep’ Charles-- Charles is a person, he shouldn’t be ‘kept’ by anyone.  Except, Erik’s just as sure that he shouldn’t say that, either; from the few times he’s tried to bring up the topic of emancipation, it seems perfectly obvious that Charles equates freedom with being abandoned.  “I will never sell you, Charles.”    
  
Charles nods, but his eyes are going dull and flat, and it’s as if Erik can actually see Charles sinking down into himself.  
  
“I’m never going to sell you.  I’m not going to let anyone take you from me.”  The last word is hardest to say.  He doesn’t like the picture it paints of either of them, but it’s the only way he thinks Charles is going to understand what he’s trying to say.  “The only way you can leave is if it’s something you want.”  
  
And - of course - at that, Charles looks at him like _he’s_ the crazy one.  
  
Before Erik can think better of it, one of Charles’s hands is caught in his own.  Perhaps he’s gone a bit overboard, when it come to avoiding getting too physically close to Charles.  Given the how spectacularly _that_ strategy has failed, and the fact that Charles has yet to respond negatively to being touched by him, it’s hard to know what else to do.  
  
Charles just stares at their intertwined hands.    
  
“You talk, so much, about I want.”  The words shake a little as they make their way out of his mouth, and Erik’s left wondering how wrong he might have been about deciding to touch Charles.  He isn’t sure if the flash of a squeeze Charles gives his hand is fear or nerves, but it keeps Erik just as he is.  
  
“All I want is to know what to do to know how to please you, how to get you to stop punishing me, _every_ \--”  
  
“What have I ever done to punish you?”  He can’t help it, after all the fucking eggshells he’s been trying to walk on to make sure--  
  
“You make me sleep alone!”  It’s so loud that it stuns the both of them into silence.  But then, it’s like Charles can’t seem to stop, and he’s on his feet, jerking his hand back, looking like he’s just barely keeping his feet still.  “In that _room_ , that bed-- by myself!  And you never touch me!”    
  
Erik might actually be happy about the fact that Charles finally seems to be opening up, but it’s hard to see the difference between Charles opening up and Charles going to pieces.  He’s shaking and he’s pale, except for the bright spots on his cheeks.    
  
Maybe it’s a knee-jerk reaction, to grab hold of someone when they look like they’re about to lose their legs from beneath them.  Or maybe, he just wants it to help, wants touching Charles to make things a little better, even if he’s just holding Charles up by his shoulders.  At the moment, it’s all Erik has, because he doesn’t know how to tell Charles that it’s better for him to have his own room.  
  
Charles buries his face against Erik’s chest with enough force to leave a bruise.  “I could-- I could be _so_ good, if I could just figure out what you want.”  
  
He wishes he could say that he doesn’t want anything from Charles.  He’d wanted information from Charles.  He wants Charles to want to be free.  And the whole host of thing he shouldn’t want with Charles are likely all too obvious.  And apart from it not being strictly true, he’s sure that Charles would take that as Erik not wanting him in any capacity-- as proof that Erik intends to get rid of him.  
  
“I know it’s hard.”  When he’d turned to press his lips against the top of Charles’s head, he doesn’t know.  It’s not important;  at the moment, his brain’s scrambling to figure out a way to let Charles know that _this_ is okay.  That him getting upset and frustrated and yelling is fine.  Is good, even.  That it won’t result in him being punished.  “So.  But you’re doing well, okay?  So I want you to go to your room.”  He doesn’t miss the way Charles tenses.  “Change into pyjamas.  And when you’re ready to go bed,”  fuck Erik’s life,  “come back here.”  
  
Charles remains just as still.  And as silent.  
  
After a few more seconds tick by, Erik prompts, “Okay?”  
  
Without a word, Charles just nods against his chest.  He moves to pull away, but Erik holds him close for a second and tries not to think about how quickly Charles complies.  
  
“I’ve got some work to do before I go to sleep.  If I’m not back by the time you are, just go ahead and get into bed.”  
  
This time, he doesn’t have to prompt Charles.  
  
“I understand.”  
  
  
  
  
Charles means to stay awake until Erik comes to bed.  
  
It would be easier, if he weren’t so exhausted.  In the course of an hour, it feels as though months of bad sleep lands squarely in his mind.  He’s too tired the run his thoughts in circles over whether Erik wants him there or is just indulging him or if it even matters because even if it’s just an indulgence then at least that means Erik wants to indulge him.  
  
And Erik’s bed is bigger than the bed in the other room.  Big enough for the world beyond the edges of the mattress to dim a little, to nag at him less.  
  
When he opens his eyes again, the lights are off, and his shoulder rests against the warmth of Erik’s back.  It takes Charles a moment to figure out what’s wrong with Erik’s skin-- that it’s not skin at all, that Erik’s wearing a t-shirt.  
  
That’s fine.  Everything’s fine.  
  
As he turns to curl against Erik, to tuck his forehead between Erik’s shoulder blades, Charles finds he can almost even believe it.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In part(s), for **Ook**.

Erik had known better than to expect anything less than Angel waiting for him downstairs.  
  
“So,” she says, pushing a cup of coffee towards him, across the kitchen counter.  “How’d it go?”  
  
“Fine.”  Her arched brow merits a more pointed, “Uneventful.”  
  
The previous evening, ‘work’ had entailed a bit of paperwork, and more importantly, letting Angel know what he was planning to do.  
  
Angel’s expression softens.  “It’s probably good for him.  I mean, he’s kind of like a little kid sometimes.  About some things.  Maybe he just doesn’t like sleeping alone-- I mean, when you were a kid, did ‘bedtime’ mean anything other than trying to stay still in a dark room, by yourself?”  
  
He hasn’t told her about the elevator.  She has no reason to think there might be more to it than Charles simply finding comfort in company.  
  
“You were an insomniac, even as a six-year-old?”  There’s something safe, in being able to tease her.  
  
The roll of her eyes very nearly tugs a smile to his mouth.  “Come on-- Obedience Schools, they’re like boarding houses, right?  All I’m saying is, if you’re not used to sleeping alone, that might be kind of freak--”  
  
“They’re just fancy little finishing schools,”  he snaps out, more roughly than he means to.  He just wants her to stop talking, to quit making it so perfectly obvious that she thinks Shaw had Charles in his bed every single fucking night.  Why would she even think that?  
  
 _You make me sleep alone-- by myself!_ Erik doesn't know why the words echo in his head.  
  
If anything, she should snap right back at him.  She should poke at him about his mood.  But she doesn’t.  She just asks,  “Are they?  I dunno.”  Her spoon hitting the rim of her coffee mug is the only thing that interrupts her pause.  “Charles is the only Pet-- the only person I’ve ever known who’s been to one.  You seriously trying to tell me Charles isn’t a bit off his rocker?”  
  
Grabbing his coffee, he shoots her an unamused glance.  “Don’t talk about him like that.”  
  
  
  
The Companion seems happier today.  He’s been absent from Caesar’s room all night.  This is probably a good sign; it wouldn’t do for his Human to become too dependent.  As it is, his Human needs to be walked quite often, needs to be routinely inspected for wellness, and needs to be consistently reminded of his own strength-- by way of chewing on his hands.  It’s good for his Human.  
  
The Companion and the Secret-Giver-of-Bacon seem up for a prodigious walk that morning, which of course makes Caesar quite proud.  Even though they obviously require his constant protection, it’s good that they’re endeavouring to increase their endurance.  
  
It’s the best he can hope for;  they have absolutely no herding instincts.  But they’re just humans, so Caesar forgives them.  After all, the Companion and the Secret-Giver-of-Bacon do their part to protect him from the Female, who seems quite bent on trying to put him into degrading little sweaters.  
  
  
  
  
“Charles’s paperwork-- you’ve got that on file?”  
  
“All the paperwork that’s customary with a second-party adoption.”  
  
“I trust that includes a provenance?”  
  
Erik is sure that there’s something distinctly Russian about the pause on Azazel’s end.  “Most of it.”  
  
“What do you mean, ‘most’?”  
  
“Some details of the original purchase contract are confidential, of course.”  
  
“Could you find them anyway?”  
  
“That would be less of a professional request and more of a personal favour.”  
  
“Then call it a favour.”  
  
“Of course I can find them.”  
  
  
  
  
When the Legs return, Caesar lifts his head from the Companion’s lap.  The Companion, clearly lost in his book, seems oblivious to arrival.  Intent on alerting him to this - because this always makes the Companion smell more hopeful-happy-eager - Caesar bounds himself down from the couch in the Smaller Downstairs Room and hurries towards the Dinging Door.  
  
Right on cue, the Companion follows.  The Legs makes some rumbly sound, which Caesar steadfastly ignores, pouncing at his feet until the Companion can realise his appearance.  
  
“Hesalwayssohappytoseeyou.”  The Companion’s voice is warm;  it’s a tone Caesar likes, so he rewards this by leaving the Legs’s shoes to their own devices, trotting over to shower the Companion with attention and licks of his fingers.  
  
This, Caesar had found, is a very good way to ensure that the television will be put on that show, where there is a conquerer who is apparently named after himself.  It is a good show.  
  
And during it, the Female often slips him popcorn, whilst the Companion is distracted.


	18. Chapter 18

“I could help you with that.”  
  
After one and a half weeks of letting Charles sleep in his bed, every morning Erik wakes up curled around, rather than the other way ‘round, Charles has offered.  It’s so ridiculously polite that it’s stopped embarrassing Erik to have Charles so casually comment on his arousal.  
  
Besides, it’s not as if he’s actually aroused;  it’s just a biological occurrence.  It happens every morning, but Charles only speaks to it when Erik’s erection is pressed against the curve of Charles’s arse.  
  
“No.”  There simply is no non-awkward answer Erik can think of.  “Thanks.”  
  
Some sick, hysterical curiosity sometimes has him considering saying yes - just as politely, _oh, why yes, thank you Charles, how very kind_  - just to see the look on Charles’s face.  
  
At least he knows better that to actually consider it;  Charles would probably be.... delighted.  Or something.  Whatever he’d be, it wouldn’t be a mix of shock and alarm.  
  
  
  
  
“So, the new sleeping arrangements seem to be working out well.”  The lilt of Angel’s voice at the end makes her curiosity transparent.  
  
“I much prefer it to sleeping alone,”  Charles says, because he’s certain she’s fishing for his _preference_.  
  
Sure enough, she gives a hybrid shrug-nod, and goes back to the dishes.  Hoping that this attempt at an inquiry will pass like the rest have - largely ignored - Charles turns his attention back to book on the counter.  Now that he manages to sleep through the night, he’s worried about falling behind on his reading.  Dr. MacTaggert has exquisitely clear expectations, which makes her easy to please, and has Charles very wary of disappointing her.  
  
“Why does it make such a difference?”  
  
“You don’t really enjoy being touched,” Charles says, when it sounds as though she’s going to start gearing herself up for some sort of speech.  It seems to strike the right chord, because when he looks up, Angel’s just looking at him, faintly startled.  “Not for extended periods of time.”  
  
She’s very fond of casual contact, but her eyes have a way of tracking people’s hands that hadn’t taken long for Charles to notice.  
  
“You don’t crave contact.”  
  
Without mulling it over for long, she returns, “And you do?”  
  
“Angel, if you gave me the choice of not having food for a week and not being fucked for a week, I’d have to think about it for a really long time.”  
  
She blinks at him.  
  
He affects a smirk so that she can laugh it off;  thankfully, she does.  
  
When he grabs his highlighter, streaking neon blue across a fetching line of text, he misses the glance Angel shoots in his direction.  
  
  
  
  
Charles and Logan stand in the park.  Charles smiles, and Logan ignores the way the flurries have started up again.  Caesar, quite admirably, attempt to catch in his mouth as much of the falling snow as he can.  
  
The dog’s obvious entertainment is reason enough to delay heading back just yet.  
  
“So, you work for Erik.  Technically.  Yes?”  With Logan, there’s nothing to be gained by dancing around a topic.  
  
“Literally.”  The correction doesn’t carry a barb.  “I do stuff, he pays me.”  
  
Charles has to hum out a small, amused scrap of a sound.  Stuff.  “And what sort of ‘stuff,’ exactly?”  
  
It’s something carefully sidestepped.  What Logan does with all his time.  What Angel does on the computer for a couple of hours every day.  Erik’s persistent eccentricities about Pets, especially given that he has three.  
  
“Errands.”  
  
“Errands.”  
  
“Dog-walking.”  
  
Charles hums again.  “And if you wanted to... not?”  
  
“Then he’d probably stop paying me.”  
  
It feels as though what Logan isn’t saying should mean more, but it doesn’t do much to unravel the tangle of an owner who seems to oppose the very idea of Pets.  
  
  
  
  
Erik manages to wake up on his back, which saves him from trying to make sure he’s not grinding against Charles in his sleep.  
  
No, it’s far more disturbing than that, because this time, it’s Charles.  Charles, who’s got an arm curled around Erik’s middle.  Charles, who’s hard against his hip.  Suddenly, the elevator is too easy to remember, but now there’s a new edge to his guilt-- on top of what he’d done to Charles, what he’d let happen, he’d been entirely selfish.  Even though he tells himself that it’s better not knowing what Charles looks like when he comes, it doesn’t make him feel like less of an asshole.  
  
Waking up really shouldn’t be this stressful.  
  
He hadn’t noticed, when the feather-light touches began skimming along his stomach.  Really, he hadn’t noticed it at all until he couldn’t ignore it anymore.  
  
Reluctant to clear his throat, his voice comes out rough around the edges:  “What’re you doing?”  
  
Charles doesn’t look up.  Erik’s wondering if he’d actually managed to speak aloud by the time Charles answers.  “Would you like me to stop?”  
  
Is there a right answer?  More importantly-- is there a wrong one?  One that will send Charles into some ridiculous, needless, downward spiral?  
  
Charles ought to stop.  And Erik ought not like the way it feels.  But those are sort of different matters altogether.  
  
“I have to get up for work,” he says, immediately wishing he’d phrased it differently.  
  
  
  
  
If Charles moves slowly enough, it’s as if he can slip right under Erik’s awareness.  It’s how he winds up with his feet in Erik’s lap.  Either Angel has little interest in the show on suspension bridges, or there’s something urgent on her computer that’s kept her upstairs for the past forty-five minutes.  
  
Suspension bridges don’t enthrall Charles, but he knows better than to turn down the opportunity to spend time alone with Erik.  Especially when they’re both awake.  
  
Although Erik is still hesitant to touch him, he doesn’t balk at being touched.  
  
Sprawled out on the couch, with Erik riveted and Caesar dozing on the floor nearby, a foreign consideration comes crashing into the side of Charles’s mind--  is it possible that Erik thinks engaging him sexually makes some kind of comment on Erik’s overall sexual preferences?  
  
It’s rare, but not completely unheard of, for someone to think that their behaviour with a Pet is some sort of reflection of orientation.  With Erik’s quirks about Pets, it wouldn’t be entirely out of the question.  And the only person Erik has ever brought home has been a woman.  Despite how much it seems that Erik’s interests are more varied than singular, there’s no sense in ignoring the possibility that he might be wrong.  Or that Erik might simply not care to acknowledge it.  
  
That’s.  
  
Well, it’s tempting.  It would explain a lot.    
  
And, of course, it’s easier to know what to do, when Erik needs his help.  
  
  
  
  
  
Having an excuse to put an end to business calls by nine at night, a few times a week, proves to be a surprising relief.  As good as consistent routine seems to be for Charles, it’s nice to take a little time to unwind. Time alone with Charles can be nerve-wracking, but it seems to get at different nerves than the ones harried by business.  
  
Besides, more often than not, chess provides a very helpful distraction, allowing them to simply talk, in a way that silence or Angel’s company seems to discourage.  
  
  
“Moira says you’re doing quite well with chemistry.”  On anyone else, it would have seemed like someone just attempting to make polite conversation, but Erik doesn’t really go in for such measures.  
  
“It’s very interesting,” Charles says as he moves a pawn.  Almost as earnestly, he adds, “Far more so than Russian literature.”  
  
This pulls a chuckle from Erik.  
  
Before the moment can grow stale, Charles adds, “I really enjoy her very much.”  
  
There’s a faint lift to Erik’s brow that Charles can’t decipher, and is followed by Erik dropping his eyes back to the board between them.  “A good education is important.  I’m glad it’s something you’re interested in pursuing.”  
  
Listening to Erik attempt to say something neutral and constructive is almost physically uncomfortable.  
  
“I don’t mean generally,”  he says, if a bit gently.  “You could have just gotten anyone, but she’s very well qualified, and very good at filling in the gaps of my education.”  Erik’s attention remains fixed-- or rather, he’s now staring a hole in chess set, but there’s no doubting he’s paying attention.  Reaching out, Charles curls his hand around the side of Erik’s hand, cupping around the base of his thumb.  It’s no surprise that Erik immediately looks up.  
  
“I just wanted to say thank you.”  Charles smiles just a little, still holding onto Erik’s hand.  “I appreciate it-- you finding someone who’s a good academic fit.”  
  
“Oh.  Well, it’s--”  It takes effort, on Charles’s part, to keep his smile small.  To hint at amusement rather than smiling wider and rolling his eyes.  “You’re welcome.”  
  
Charles keeps holding onto Erik’s hand, until whatever senses detect such things tell him that he’s starting to strain Erik’s comfort.  And then he holds on a few more seconds before releasing Erik’s hand, before settling back easily in his own chair.  
  
“Erik?”  Charles says after a moment under Erik’s cloudy gaze.  “It’s your move.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Maybe he’s just horny.”  
  
“ _Logan_.”  Erik’s starting to wish he’d taken up Logan’s offer of a beer.  Even if it is only one in the afternoon.  
  
“C’mon, he’s a teenager, right?”  
  
“He’s eighteen,” it feels important to emphasize, even though it’s hardly an argument.  
  
“Yeah, exactly.  When I was eighteen, all it took for me was pretty much a strong breeze.”  
  
Erik doesn’t know if Logan actually expects him to reciprocate with some sort of nostalgic reminiscence, but all Logan gets is a glare.  Logan remains obnoxiously unaffected, goes back to flipping through the pages of driving directions.  
  
Really, it’s a line of conversation Erik is happy to let drop, especially when they actually have something important to discuss.  Not that Charles isn’t important, but it’s a different kind of important than falsified traveling documentation.  Logan’s done this enough times to get through the Canadian border without trouble, but it’s been a while - it’s been since Caesar had turned up, actually - that Logan’s gone away for a few days.  
  
“Maybe Charlie-boy’s got a type?  Older, lanky, light-haired--”  
  
“We do _not_ look alike,” Erik growls.  
  
“Whatever you say, Boss.”  And Erik can hear the eyeroll.  “But he never looks at me like that.  ‘Course, I’m not putting my hands anywhere near him.”  
  
There’s a conviction there that seems disproportionate.  Seeing as to how Logan had tried to tell him, weeks ago, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with being attracted to someone who’s attractive, he’s not surprised to feel puzzlement tug at his face.  
  
“I like my fingers,” is all Logan says.  
  
Erik rolls his eyes, not bothering to correct Logan that that’s Angel, not Charles.  As if Charles could hurt anybody.  
  
“Anyway, all I’m saying is that you might wanna find a way to keep him a little more occupied.  He’s started asking Questions.”  
  
“What sort of questions?”  
  
“‘Gee, whatever do you _do_ for Erik?’”  It’s an atrocious attempt at imitating Charles’s voice.  Thankfully it’s gone when Logan adds, “And I don’t think either one of you is really ready for that conversation.”  
  
Well.  At least Logan’s not wrong about _that_.


	19. Chapter 19

Erik’s exhausted.  Conference calls with Tokyo are tedious.  Between the fourteen hour time difference and the translators, it seems like they drag on forever.  And on top of that, he’d finally gotten around to looking at that file Azazel had left.  While he knows that it’s promising, that they’re able to start looking into Shaw’s overseas business partners, if still feels as if they’re nowhere.  
  
When he drags himself into his room, it’s not even a surprise to find Charles there.  Part of him had hoped that Charles might already be asleep, but no.  No, he’s just... reclining there, in Erik’s bed, a book splayed open with one hand.  
  
Not that Erik minds.  It’d just be easier, were Charles asleep.  Erik cuts himself off before his brain can start making comparisons to Renaissance paintings of half-naked youths in repose.  
  
He keeps in a sigh as he sits on the edge of the bed to tug his tie free, to toe off his shoes.  
  
“Long day.”  It’s not a question.    
  
Even better, he doubts Charles expect more than the vaguely affirmative huff Erik emits.  As his socks join his shoes on the floor, he can hear Charles setting his book to the side.  It’s not all bad, Erik can admit, going to sleep with company.  
  
“Do you think it makes you gay, for you to be attracted to me?”  
  
And just like that, he’s back to wishing Charles asleep.  
  
“No-- being exclusively interested in sex with men would make be gay,”  he says, because he doesn’t want to go anywhere near a statement that includes acknowledging being attracted to Charles.  He should just leave at that, but he can’t.  Not after all the looks, and the little touches, and the--  “What’re you doing, Charles?”  
  
There’s scant hesitation before Charles replies,  “I thought it was all right, to ask questions.”  
  
Even though the invitation to assure Charles that it is practically comes with calligraphy, Erik ignores it.  “I mean, what are you doing?” he asks more forcefully.  He doesn’t dare look at Charles, worried he’ll find Charles worried, or scared, but they can’t keep doing this.  Charles sleeping in his bed is one thing, but it’s certainly going no--  
  
“I just want you to know it’s okay.”  Erik wants to kick himself.  He never should have caved on the sleeping situation.  “That I want you to...”  
  
Of course, there’s no good way to finish that sentence.  Not honestly, anyway.  He doesn’t even notice how harsh his voice comes out when he says,  “You want me to use you?  Want me to treat you like some... _thing_ that exists solely for my amusement?”  
  
“You couldn’t.”  It’s the soft amusement wrapped around the words that overrides Erik’s better judgement, that has him jerking his head over to look at Charles.  Charles, who has the nerve to look as though he thinks Erik’s being stubborn.  “Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.  And that’s _not_ what I want.”  
  
Erik would bet half his net worth on that being the first time in years, maybe a decade, Charles has said he didn’t want something.  Somehow, it seems more significant than Charles being able to say what he _does_ want.  Hoping that he might expand on the list of things he doesn’t want, Erik keeps quiet.  And still.  Even when Charles crawls out from covers to sit next to him, cross-legged, and still facing him.  
  
“I want to help you forget about the things that bother you.”  Which doesn’t sound all that bad.  And chess does that for Erik.  “I want to be there for you.”    
  
It might more sound harmless, were Charles not moving again, no leaning forward and sliding over and straddling Erik’s knees.  Erik knows he ought to put an end to it, but his arms won’t cooperate.  Not even to try to help hold Charles steady.  Not that he seems to need it.  This has to be stopped. All of it. The touching, the deranged version of flirting Charles apparently employs, this-- all of it. It has to stop. So why can't he?  
  
Charles’s fingertips form a constellation of points of contact against his cheek.  “I want you to hold me while I sleep and think about me while you’re at work and I want you to be _happy_ when you come home to me.”  But Erik already does those things.  “I don’t want you to be alone.”  
  
This time, when Charles’s lips meet his, Erik’s sense surfaces from the haze long enough to tug his head to the side.  He doesn't expect the way Charles persists, to catch his lips again. Charles's hand slips into his hair, uncontested as Charles entreats at his lower lip.  
  
“I don’t want to be alone.”  
  
The voice in the back of Erik's head that’s keen to insist on what an idiot he is goes suddenly mute.  
  
He lets Charles kiss him, right up until he can feel his cock get entirely too interested in the proceedings.  Using a newfound grasp of Charles’s hips, Erik holds him in place enough to separate their mouths.  But he should have kept his eyes shut;  it’s obscene, the way Charles looks.  His lips are too wet, too red.  And with his pupils blown wide, the slim, azure ring around them seems unnaturally bright.  
  
And his voice is excruciatingly breathless when he says, “I want you to know pleasure that’ll shut your brain off for a couple of hours.  And unconditional affection.”  
  
Letting out a rough, discouraging sound, Erik turns his head before Charles subdue his capacity to think again.  “I can’t-- I’m not going to fuck you, Charles.  Eventually, you’re going to understand how fucked up this whole thing is, and you’re going to hate--”  
  
“I’m not talking about anyone fucking anyone.”  
  
Oh.  But.  Then _what_ \--  
  
“And, while we’re being quite honest, I think you just insulted my creativity.”  
  
It’s too cavalier.  Too coy and too teasing.    
  
“Seriously, Charles, what the _fuck_ \--”  
  
“Language, Erik,”  Charles chides softly.  It’s hypocritical and absurd and deplorably effective.  Or maybe it’s just that Charles’s fingertips choose that moment to stoke along the taut muscles of his neck.  Which is cheating, Erik thinks.  He can’t keep in the sigh building in his chest.  When Charles speaks again, it’s a silken sound that seems to soak into his brain.  “You’re really getting far ahead of yourself.  It’s been a long day, and you’re tired.  Busy week.  For now, just get ready for bed.  We can talk about it tomorrow.”  
  
And as soon as Charles retreats back under the covers, Erik obeys.  Like he’s the Pet.


	20. Chapter 20

Morning finds Erik alone in bed.  The sun is up, peeking out around the drawn curtains.  
  
Erik frowns at the empty bed.  And at his alarm clock, which seems to have been disabled.  And at the floor, conspicuously absent his shoes and socks from the night before.  It feels like cheating, for Charles to say they’ll discuss something the next day, and then be gone the next day.  
  
The only silver lining is that Erik can at least get out of bed, and into the shower to toss off with some peace of mind.  
  
Peace of mind, however, proves hard to come by, with echoes of Charles’s voice in his head and the refreshed memory of Charles’s lips against his.  For fantasy’s sake, he wants to believe it’s fine.  Everything in a fantasy is fine.  Plenty of people have perfectly absurd fantasies.  That’s the beauty of a fantasy:  it’s something you know you really ought not do.  If it were something you really wanted to act on, it’d be just a depressingly unfulfilled aspiration.  And there’s nothing depressing about the idea of pulling Charles into his lap.  
  
It’s the reality that’s wrecking his fantasy.  With a fantasy, the guilt only comes afterwards.  With the reality, there’s no way to know, no way to be certain, if it’s what Charles really wants, or if he just thinks this is what Erik wants.    
  
There’s no doubt in his mind that he’d be able to make it good for Charles, were he to properly take Charles to bed.  It’s not like he’d hurt Charles.  Apart from his own interest, he could do it for the best reasons.  He could do it _for_ Charles, instead of doing it _to_ Charles.  
  
But if Charles doesn’t believe he has the right to say no means that, doesn’t that mean he’s incapable of saying yes?    
  
The thought alone is enough to tank Erik’s erection.  
  
So much for the silver lining.  
  
  
  
  
It’s a three-day weekend, so that means it’s a Friday morning with a big breakfast.  Apparently, this morning, it’s to be huevos rancheros-- though news that Erik will be sleeping in means the breakfast has officially been rescheduled to ‘brunch.’  
  
By the time Erik gets downstairs, he does not look amused.  Charles is just glad Angel is still occupied with looking up recipes on the internet.  
  
“You call this ‘talking about it in the morning’?” Erik grumbles at him, clearly trying to figure out where Angel is.  
  
Charles affects his most innocent expression.  “You needed to sleep, and Caesar needed to go out.  And since Logan isn’t available this morning, I had to bribe one of the doormen with Angel’s brownies, and by then I was quite awake,” he rattles off.  
  
To his great satisfaction, Erik looks more bewildered than grumpy.  
  
“Should I have just crawled back into bed with you?”  
  
“ _Charles_ \--”  
  
“Don’t snap at him!”  Angel, to the rescue.  With recipe print-out in hand.  “He lets you sleep in and everything, and you’re still a bowl full of sunshine.  You don’t even deserve any coffee.”  
  
She moves to pull Erik’s MIT mug of range, but Charles intercepts, quite certain she doesn’t mean it at all.  Pushing it across the counter over to Erik, who looks even less amused than he did before, Charles simply says,  “Later.  I didn’t say morning, I said ‘tomorrow.’  There’s still plenty of ‘tomorrow’ left.”  
  
Although Erik narrows his eyes, he says nothing.  He just takes his coffee.  And stalks off into the living room.


	21. Chapter 21

By the middle of the afternoon, it seems as though Erik is intent on waiting Charles out.  He’s locked himself in the office next to his bedroom for the past few hours since brunch (which really turned more into lunch), and Charles’s internal clock insists that he’s waited quite long enough.  
  
Satisfied that Angel is sufficiently occupied with her newest video game interest, and that Caesar is - for some reason - enthralled in watching Angel pretend to steal cars and abuse the elderly, Charles slips upstairs.  
  
“Are you ready to talk?”  is Erik’s greeting once he lets himself into Erik's office.  
  
“Are you ready to listen?”  is the obvious reply.  It has the desired effect.  The best way to deal with Erik’s questions, it seems, is with questions in return.  It’s all very socratic.  
  
Erik looks at him, hard and steady, but not angry.  Just... frustrated, perhaps.  And that’s fair enough, Charles supposes;  if Erik wants things different, he’s the one with the authority to make it otherwise.  Coddling Erik, he should have realised sooner, was never going to work.  
  
“I have no idea,” Erik says, “what it is you want.”  
  
Charles smiles.  Were Erik someone else, the question would have a real answer.  With Erik, the only way to be right is to surprise him.    
  
“That’s hardly a fair question,” he says blandly, slipping his hands into his pockets.  “It’s too broad, to abstract.  Few humans are capable of answering it.”    
  
For instance, he’s quite certain Erik can’t.  Not honestly, anyway.  It’s no more a fault against Erik than it is the truth.  Charles’s wants are simple.  Etched into his mind and ingrained down to his bones.  It’s just that his answers don’t seem to translate well with Erik.  
  
But that’s the difference, Charles supposes, between talking and communicating.  Most people are preoccupied with some obsession with being _heard_.  It seems far more selfish than wishing to be understood.  
  
“But, if you’d like to discuss what I want right now, that’s much easier,”  Charles goes on.  “Right now, I’d very much like to get off.”  
  
Surprise wipes Erik’s expression blank, and it takes genuine effort to keep his own face relaxed.  It’s made easier, when he can wrap his fingers around the silk in his pocket.  Erik’s tie, from the night before.  
  
“I want you to just sit there,” he adds, just when Erik tries to open his mouth to speak.  “And I want to get off.”  He watches Erik’s eyes track the ribbon of crimson he pulls from his pocket.  “I hope it’s not too much to ask that you keep your hands to yourself.”  
  
He’s around the side of Erik’s desk before Erik manages to speak.  “Charles, what--”  
  
“I want to tie your hands behind your back,”  he says simply.  “Using this.”  
  
Erik’s eyes flicker back to the tie in his hand.  
  
“It would make me feel more comfortable.”  
  
The lack of response on Erik’s part, Charles supposes he can take for consent.  So he takes another step forward, putting himself between Erik’s legs.  Kneeing his way across Erik’s lap, he doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t say anything, as he knots Erik’s hands behind his back, on the other side of the spine of chair.  It’s a quick-release tie, and not too tight, but it’s not as though Charles is really relying upon the restraint to hold Erik in place.  
  
“I don’t think you understand how hard it is, for a well-trained Pet to get himself off,”  he mentions as he pulls back, stepping onto his own feet so that he can peel off his shirt and step out of his jeans.  There’s a purpose to his own nudity, to getting Erik see him, to look at him-- but there’s also something to the aesthetic that Charles simply enjoys about Erik being fully dressed while he is anything but.  
  
His own arousal takes no conscious thought, not when he’s been planning this all morning.  And he doesn’t fall prey to the temptation to glance down at Erik’s lap.  An insecure Pet might, but he’s better than that.    
  
Besides, when he settles himself back across Erik’s thighs, he doesn’t really have to guess.  
  
“When I’m alone,” he says, before dragging his tongue along his palm to ease the friction when he wraps his hand around his cock, “it takes forever.  It’s practically impossible.”  
  
Erik’s wide, nearly frantic eyes don’t know where to look, but it’s not Charles’s job to tell him.  Instead, he presses his free hand against Erik’s sternum, as if to hold him in place.  
  
“It feels _wrong_ to do it by myself, even when I’m thinking about you.”  Something jerks against the taut confines of Erik’s trousers, but Charles ignores it.  No matter how much he just wants to sink the to the floor and goad Erik into fucking his mouth.  “Because it’s not the same-- it’s not enough.  It never works.”  
  
And, as if Charles had penciled it right into Erik’s schedule:  “Charles, I can--”  
  
“I’m not by myself right now,”  Charles says quickly, letting his eyes fall shut.  Letting his rhythm pick up as he strokes himself atop Erik’s lap, twisting his wrist as his grip closes around the head of his cock.  Of course Erik would offer.  Out of some sense of duty.  But he doesn’t want Erik’s obligation or his pity.  If Erik’s going to touch him, he wants it to be because Erik can’t help himself anymore.  “I like you watching me.  Do you think about me, when you touch yourself?”  And, because a Pet doesn’t need shame unless his owner enjoys such things, “Did you think about me, when you brought that woman home?”  
  
Erik goes deliciously tense under him.  “Fuck, Charles.”  
  
Erik’s eyes are fixed between their bodies, and Charles isn’t complaining.  It lets Charles look, too, to see Erik’s own erection fighting against dark fabric, before he closes his eyes again.  
  
“She’s not the first person you’ve brought home since I arrived.”  It’s a guess, but one Charles doesn’t think is much of a risk.  
  
Even though the silence drags one for a few interminable seconds, Charles doesn’t open his eyes.  He just digs his teeth into his lower lip to stifle a sound as he rocks his body closer to Erik’s.  
  
“No,”  Erik confirms, his breath hitching.  
  
“It’s okay,”  Charles manages to get out before a groan.  Thumbing at the tip of his cock, he lets his eyes flutter open.  “‘S good-- I wasn’t ready, not then.”    
  
It’s what Erik needs, Charles is sure-- some sort of emotional journey on Charles’s part, some demarcation between then and now, some way to let himself cling to the duality of it not being okay before and it being okay now.    
  
The trick is to avoid overselling it.  
  
“You,” Erik manages, finally.  “You listened.”  
  
Erik sounds like he’s guessing, too-- and it’s a good guess, except that in Erik’s head, Charles probably got off on listening.  Charles can work with that.  And it makes him feel just a little better, to consider that perhaps that night, with that woman, Erik had been thinking about him.  Wondering if he could hear.  
  
Hungry want claws its way up Charles’s spine.  He can see it perfectly in his head, what it might look like for Erik to have some woman bend over something, maybe the dresser, taking her from behind so that at least he could _pretend_.  
  
His hand slides up Erik’s shirt, curls around the back of his neck and tangles in Erik’s hair.  He doesn’t need to feign an edge of desperation for the way he starts fucking up into his own.  “God, Erik-- the sound you make, when you come--”  
  
The memory of it is enough to tip Charles over the edge, enough to have him coming across Erik’s shirt and the backs of his own fingers.  He’s silent through the peak of it, moaning low in his throat as the intensity starts to ebb, leaving him shuddering, rocking against Erik’s contained erection.  
  
Fuck-drunk and dizzy with his own release, he still can’t help noticing the mere thread by which Erik’s restraint is dangling.  Teasing little circles with his hips atop Erik’s lap, Charles’s lips bumble their way along Erik’s jaw.  It lets him lean forward enough to liberate his clean hand from Erik’s hair, to use it to ply Erik’s trousers open enough.  
  
Charles wraps his hand, slick with his own come, around the base of Erik’s cock and drags his fist along Erik’s length at a demanding pace.  “Come on, Erik, I want-- I just want--”  
  
Erik’s chin jerks up and Charles can feel the body beneath him tense up perfectly.  His lips part in a pale echo as Erik groans, and then spills himself, hot and thick, in Charles’s grasp.  
  
  
“I’ve made a mess of your shirt.”  Charles’s voice laps at his senses like water against the hull of a ship.  All Erik can do is nod.  “And your trousers.”  Charles's lips brush his ear as he says,  “The dry cleaning people are going to look at you funny.”  
  
And then the tie’s falling away from his wrists, and Erik laughs in spite of himself.  But so does Charles.  Without quite realising how, their laughter blunts itself out as their lips meet.  Erik wouldn't mind keeping on with that, but Charles is the one who pulls away.  
  
“Shall I bring you a change of clothes?”  
  
Erik’s pulse turns sluggish, wary of how subservient the offer sounds.  But when he forces his eyes open, the curl of Charles’s lips is decidedly impish.  
  
Mustering a halfhearted roll of his eyes, Erik mutters, “I can get my own damn clothes.”


	22. Chapter 22

“You do recall that I know you’re sleeping together, right?”  She doesn’t even look up from her laptop as she says it.  
  
“Angel--”  
  
“Sleeping _next_ to each other, whatever,” she amends, both flippant and annoyed.  
  
Without bothering to lower the volume on the late night news, he asks,  “What, exactly, is your point?”  
  
“He went upstairs half an hour ago.  Caesar’s sure to be in his little doggie bed by now,”  she goes on, as though he’s being a troublesome child attempting to avoid a bedtime.  “Don’t you think it’s time you went up to bed, too?  Just because it’s weird as hell--”  
  
“ _You’re_ the one who said--”  
  
“Oh, my god, calm down,”  Angel all but demands.  “Everything with Charles is weird.  Because he’s Charles.  You’re completely incidental.”  
  
There’s probably something wrong with his entire household, that he finds it so heartening to be assured of his own irrelevance.  But he’s not going to complain.  
  
“But don’t let him feel like it’s a chore, okay?”  she presses.  “It’ll only make him feel bad, if he thinks you’re just putting up with him being there.”  
  
Inaccurate, the assessment is not.  It’s just an impossible eventuality, given what had gone on that afternoon.  
  
What had gone on, however, might have something to do with why it’s pushing one in the morning and Erik’s still lingering downstairs despite having little to do.  As he dutifully makes his way upstairs, he tries to roll through possible responses to, say, walking in to find Charles sprawled out, naked, expecting Erik to fuck him.  
  
The reality is infinitely more tame.  
  
Charles’s nose is buried in a biography of Friedrich Wohler-- which is, itself, heavily laden with what appear to be colour-coded adhesive tabs.  
  
“Have you read this?”  Charles asks, despite the fact that he obviously found the book on Erik’s shelves.  Who keeps books they haven’t read?  
  
“Yes,” he says, finding it almost fancifully amusing, to play second fiddle in Charles’s attention.  It's hardly a bad thing; it's really not at all healthy the way Charles can fixate, sometimes. Besides, even if Erik were inclined to mind, it wouldn't trump how singularly delighted Charles seems.  
  
“Oh, are you--  did you want to go to sleep?”  Charles asks, as if it had taken a while for it to properly register in his mind, that Erik had entered the room.  
  
“I’m going to shower first,” he says.  He hadn’t been planning on it, actually, but otherwise, he suspects Charles will set the book aside.  And Erik can’t quite bring himself to interrupt.  
  
Charles’s answer is so mumbled as to be completely incomprehensible.  
  
  
By the time Erik’s finished, he has to wonder if he’d been overzealous in taking his time;  Charles seems to be nodding off, even as he tries to hold the book upright.  It likely doesn’t help Charles’s efforts that he’s mostly laying down in bed, with just the two bedside lamps to illuminate the whole room.  
  
“Charles,”  Erik says quietly, turning down his side of the bed.  
  
Blinking his eyes back open, Charles hums out a vaguely curious sound.  
  
“Time for bed, I think.”  
  
“‘M in bed.”  But he doesn’t resist when Erik leans over to slip the book from his grasp.  
  
“Perhaps time to sleep, then?”  Taking note of the page number, he sets the book on his nightstand.  
  
Another hum escapes Charles, but this time it’s one of acquiescence.  Tucking half his face against the pillow, his eyes are already closed.  
  
It doesn’t stop Charles from making a faintly dissatisfied sound, when he doesn’t immediately find Erik within arm’s reach.  Tonight, Erik hasn’t bothered with a shirt.  Somehow, it doesn’t feel as strange as he’d thought it would, when Charles’s arm curls around the bare skin of his middle.


	23. Chapter 23

“ _Erik_ ,”  Angel hisses.  Charles is immediately awake, though he keeps his eyes closed.  “Erik wake _up_.”  
  
Some garbled sound comes out of Erik’s mouth - though there’s nothing ambiguous about his displeasure - as the warmth vanishes from Charles’s back.  
  
“Erik it’s Logan--”  
  
She goes immediately silent.  The whole room goes silent.  The weight on the other side of the bed is still there, so Erik can’t have gotten up.  Waiting becomes tedious, but Charles doesn’t dare open his eyes.  Doesn’t let his breathing change.  Doesn’t move.  
  
He just reminds himself that this is why he doesn’t initiate anything in Erik’s bed.  Part of why, anyway.  There’s no mistaking the asexual nature of Erik welcoming Charles into his bed.  Erik’s office is safer, somehow more private.  Or at the very least, it’s unlikely to have Angel barging in with some emergency in the middle of the night.  
  
“He’s all right?”  Erik asks; had it been any louder than a murmur, the intrusion of the sound probably would have been enough to startle Charles into giving himself away.  
  
Silence, again.  At least this time it’s brief.  
  
“Do we...”  
  
“It’s not his concern,”  Angel says gently.  
  
The mattress shifts.  Bare feet pad across the floor.  The door closes.  And Charles tries to put himself back to sleep.  
  
It isn’t his concern.  
  
  
  
  
Erik hands over a cup of tea to where Angel sits, perched on the stool at the kitchen peninsula.  He wants to blame Charles for the growing tea collection in the cupboard, but he know Angel has more than a fair share of the responsibility for the grocery list.  
  
“Hank says he’ll be fine,” he reminds Angel, who doesn’t look up.  
  
“You should get him a gun,” she mutters.  
  
It’s an old argument.  “No, I shouldn’t.  If he got caught with--”  
  
She huffs a weary groan and waves her hand.  There’s nothing new, on either side of the conversation.  
  
And until law enforcement discovering a gun on Logan’s person no longer gives them the right to put him down without asking questions, there won’t be.  
  
“How’s the girl?”  Erik asks, if only to have something else to talk about.  And because, somewhere in the pre-dawn chaos of trying to get a barely-conscious, beaten and bleeding Logan to stop reacting as though Hank fucking McCoy was some kind of threat, some of the details had fallen through the cracks.  
  
Angel finally looks up, and the iron behind her eyes is a good enough sign for Erik.  “Alex has her.  Barring any other catastrophe, they’ll be in Vancouver the day after tomorrow.”  
  
Erik nods, glancing towards the stairs.  It seems like it would be pushing his luck, to try climbing back into bed without waking Charles.  He no longer truly suspects Charles will make some kind of sexual advance every time he gets into bed - mostly because Charles hasn’t, not once, in the week since they started.... doing whatever it is they do in Erik’s office; even Charles’s morning offers have stopped - but that doesn’t mean Erik doesn’t wonder if disrupting their routine might inspire some sort of change.  
  
“What do we tell Charles?”  she asks, failing to conceal the sigh under the words.  
  
“Car accident?”  he suggests.  If she’s got a better idea, he’s all for hearing it.  
  
After a few moments of letting the gears in her head crank, she shrugs, and says, “Yeah, that’d make sense.”  Glancing him over, she adds, “And you might want to call in sick to work.  You look like shit.”  
  
In the middle of rolling his eyes, his phone goes off, buzzing almost violently in the pocket of yesterday’s jeans.  When he sees Azazel’s name and personal number flash across the screen, he thinks Angel might have a point.  
  
After all, nothing good has ever come of Azazel calling before breakfast.  
  
  
  
  
“Try to say nothing.”  Before Erik can even protest, Azazel holds up a hand.  “You will only confuse him.  You will not like the way I talk to him, you probably will not like anything he says, but there is nothing for it.  Except silence.  On your part.”  
  
Annoyed enough to want to dig in his heels, Erik looks unimpressed, but stays keeps his mouth shut.  He simply crosses his arms over his chest, wishing he’d changed into something a little more professional.  He might be avoiding the offices downstairs, but he hardly feels very put together, sitting there in yesterday’s jeans and what he hopes is a clean shirt, whilst Azazel stands there looking every bit the lawyer.  
  
He only has to enjoy his disquiet for a little longer before Charles is knocking on and opening the door all at once.  
  
“Ah, hello, Charles.”  Strangely-amiable-professional-Azazel always throws Erik for a loop.  
  
Charles smiles and they trade nods.  “Very nice to see you again, Mr. Romanov.”  
  
There’s a friendly warmth there, which throws into relief how quiet Charles has been for most of the day thus far;  then again, it had taken Angel almost half an hour to convince him that Logan is doing just fine, despite his ‘car accident.’  
  
He glances to Erik, but Erik keeps his mouth shut.  Since Azazel said nothing about ignoring Charles, though, he nods after a moment.  
  
“Well, do sit.”  Exactly how Azazel can seem to be the owner of whatever room he’s in is something of a mystery.  Presumably, there’s an entire course devoted to such tricks in law school.  “Now.  You know who I am.”  
  
“You’re Erik’s lawyer.”  
  
“And I have no marked sympathy for the State Adoption Agency.”  The smile that follows is enough to irk at Erik, so it’s hard to understand why Charles gives a small chuckle.  
  
“No, it would seem not.”  
  
There’s no overlooking the way Azazel’s focus hones sharply, narrowing itself solely to Charles.  “I am exceptionally devoted to my clients, though my concern is, as a rule, generally limited to their legal wellbeing.”  
  
He lifts a prompting brow at Charles, who seems far more attentive, but by no means nervous.  “You mean to say that you would never to anything to jeopardise a client’s... wellbeing.  That you’re loyal.  Perhaps to a fault.”  He spares a glance in Erik’s direction before darting his eyes back to Azazel.  “I admire loyalty.”  
  
“We understand each other, I think.”  
  
Azazel and Charles might, but the more they talk, the more it sounds to Erik like he’s wandered into some Cold War movie.  
  
“I have some questions for you, all of which, Erik has approved.”  Which is hardly true, but not exactly a lie.  “And I expect them to be answered honestly.”  
  
Much as Erik wants to add that it’s okay if Charles doesn’t know the answer, Azazel’s warning glance has him keeping his peace.  Charles, meanwhile, simply nods.    
  
“Very good.  Now, for pleasantries:  how do you like living with Erik?”  
  
Charles’s smile softens.  “Very much.  I’m happy here.”  
  
“Good.  How does Erik treat you?”  
  
“Quite well.  He affords me quite a lot of time, especially considering the demands of his job.”  
  
“How did Shaw treat you?”  
  
The hesitation clatters silently, and Erik can practically feel Charles slipping away.  “Badly.”  
  
The word wrenches in Erik’s gut.  “Charles, you--”  
  
“Erik,”  Azazel’s voice cracks like a whip, but Charles is the one who flinches.  Erik simply glares at Azazel, who gives a small shake of his head.    
  
This whole thing is ridiculous.  Whatever Azazel wants to know, he’s quite sure he would have been able to ask Charles himself.  If it weren’t in the interest of getting at Shaw, Erik would call a halt to things right there.  
  
Once confident Erik isn’t going to push, he turns back to Charles and considers for a moment.  “Can you give me an example of him treating you badly?”  
  
“No.”  Charles’s throat bobs as he swallows.  
  
“This is fine,” Azazel says, all casual cheer, and the knuckles of Charles’s folded hands regain some of their colour.  “But surely he punished you, from time to time, when you needed it?”  
  
When Charles visibly relaxes, Erik has to trap his tongue between his teeth.    
  
“Of course.”  
  
“And he was good enough to explain it to you, why he punished you, what you had done wrong.”  
  
Every word out of Azazel’s mouth has Erik wanting to doubt him, just a little; Azazel’s objections to the whole Pet institution has less to do with the ethics of the principle, and more to do with how corrupt the system has become.  At the moment, Azazel seems entirely too comfortable with the whole thing.  There’s nothing Erik can put his finger on that’s different from how Azazel normally speaks, but it’s there-- subtle and formless.  
  
After a brief pause to consider has Charles nodding.  “Yes, otherwise it wouldn’t been a very effective punishment.”  
  
Like he’s asking what fucking flavour of tea Charles doesn’t care for, Azazel asks,  “What punishment was most frightening to you?”  
  
Charles barely even starts to look towards Erik when Azazel sharply snaps his fingers, which instantly reclaims Charles’s attention.  “The question, Charles.”  
  
Although he’s gone pale, and his hands have turned into tight little fists against his slacks, Charles’s voice is strangely steady as he says, “Being locked in the dark, alone.”  
  
A coppery tang lances through Erik’s mouth and all Azazel does is nod.  
  
“Unpleasant-- but you are a good boy; surely this was rarely necessary?”  
  
All Charles can do is nod, and all Erik can think about is throwing Azazel out the window.  
  
“Now I want you think about a punishment lighter than being locked up, alone, in the dark.  Something you might have enjoyed-- something he did to unwind.  Can you do that?”  
  
Again, Charles just nods.  
  
“Can you give me an example?”  
  
Another nod.  Azazel just smiles and leans forward, causing Charles to go rigid.  But all Azazel does is extend his hand, palm facing the floor, in Charles’s direction.  Charles does nothing until Azazel’s fingers wiggle themselves a little, and then Charles grabs hold of Azazel’s fingers, clinging tightly.  
  
It’s the first time Erik’s ever seen Charles move to touch someone.  Someone else.  
  
“You are doing very well.”  Charles swallows again.  “Very good.”  
  
Charles’s eyes fall shut for just a moment.  Long enough for him to say, “A litupa.”  
  
Erik doesn’t know what the hell that is, and that Azazel just nods isn’t exactly comforting.  
  
“Did it ever happen, that while he was using a litupa, or doing something like that, that you got scared-- scared like you are when you are locked away?  Like you were being very sternly punished, but you did not understand why?”  
  
From where he sits, Erik can practically hear Charles’s hand tighten around Azazel’s fingers.  
  
“Yes.”  He’d thought Charles had been pale before, but now he seems positively ashen.  “Not.  That wasn’t-- That was unusual.”  
  
Before Charles can start working himself up, Azazel’s free hand waves dismissively.  “Of course.  It is no reflection on him, or on you.  We are, none of us, perfect.”    
  
He waits for Charles to nod.  The bob of Charles’s head flips some sort of switch;  his shoulders relax, he manages to take a breath, and colour comes creeping back into his face.  
  
“Those are all of my questions.”  This pulls a flicker of a smile from Charles’s face.  “Now, what you will do is write down when these rarities occurred.  If you do not recall the exact date, then estimate.”  
  
Charles releases Azazel’s hand without comment.  He seems more subdued that when he’d first come in, but Charles’s voice is once again at ease when he asks, “Do you have a pen?”  
  
  
  
  
  
If looks could kill, Azazel would have been eviscerated.  Several times over.  
  
“Ah, come, come-- what is true of a good tailor is true of one’s finances: a success may be undetectable, but a failure is far more difficult to hide,”  he says, tucking away the legal pad Charles had left.  
  
Erik’s stomach is still turning itself over, despite how much he tries not to think about how quickly Charles can click from polite conversation to poorly concealed anxiety, and then back again as if nothing had happened.  “I don’t ever want you to do that again.”  
  
“No?  You prefer your method?  Withholding attention and affection until he crumbles?”  There’s no decent comeback for that.  Yes, he’d hated how he had, completely inadvertently, gotten information from Charles-- but it hadn’t stopped him from taking the information all the same.  “Me?  I prefer the hand-holding.”  
  
Yeah, about that.  “He’s never let anybody else touch him before.”  
  
“I did not touch him, he touched me,”  Azazel points out, collecting his things.  “Nothing impolite, with you sitting just there.”  
  
He’d press the issue, but the longer Erik stays, the longer Charles is off by himself, and at the moment that sounds awful.  
  
“So, you’re looking for... blundered business transactions?  And you figure the best way to that is to cross-reference using ‘whenever Shaw used Charles as a whipping post’ as an indicator?”  
  
Azazel’s movements come to smooth stop.  For a moment, they simply look at each other-- Erik with his simmering anger and Azazel with his careless half-amusement.  
  
“Do you think it frightens him?”  The words sound genuinely curious.  Or at least as genuine as Azazel sounds about anything.  “That he fears pain?”  
  
Erik knows better than to give the sensible answer that it’s rational to fear pain.  Besides the fact that giving the obvious answer is always the best way to make Azazel think he’s right, ‘Charles’ and ‘rational’ aren’t always that compatible.  
  
Of course, offering no answer, means that Azazel leaves without offering any more than a smirk.  
  
  
  
  
Erik finds Charles in the living room, sitting on the couch.  This wouldn’t be at all alarming, except for the fact that he’s got Caesar in his lap.  Charles has very strict policies about dogs on couches;  it’s apparently not permitted.  Caesar doesn’t appear terribly concerned, but one of Charles’s hands is a steady current of affection-- stroking from just behind Caesar’s ears and all the way down his spine, to the little nub of his tail, over and over again.  
  
Angel looks positively unnerved.  Though that could be mostly due to the vacant way Charles is staring _at_ the television, rather than actually watching whatever cooking show Angel has on.  
  
If Erik could actually growl, he probably would.  
  
Forcing Angel’s presence to the periphery of his awareness, Erik steps up onto the couch, wedging himself between its back and Charles.  He pushes away his inclination to hesitate, and simply wraps his arms around Charles.  
  
“I would never do that to you,” he says, right against Charles’s neck.  
  
Charles has gone totally still, which means Caesar has started to squirm, discontent with the pause in his attention.  
  
Angel, thank fuck, chooses that moment to hop up from her chair and hustle towards the kitchen, calling Caesar’s name and making little puckering sounds.  And then it’s just Erik and Charles.  
  
“Never,”  Erik says again.  “Do you understand?”  
  
The thud of Erik’s heart in his chest passes each grueling second of silence.  
  
“I believe you mean that.”  The unspoken ‘ _but_ ’ practically has a physical presence in the room.  
  
“Do you think I’ll change my mind?”  Erik can’t stop himself from asking.  
  
Charles’s next answer comes a little quicker.  “I know that you could.”  
  
And there’s the rub.  There’s nothing to stop Erik but himself.  And why should Charles expect restraint from him?  
  
Desperate to hold this possibility at bay - not because Erik would never lock Charles up like that, but because he’d never lock _anyone_ up like that - he asks, “If I... insisted that you believe me-- could you?”  
  
Erik doesn’t know if the skittish tensing and relaxing along Charles’s muscles is him attempting to hold himself back or him trying to free his tongue, but eventually, Charles whispers, “Yes.”  
  
He can’t tell which force is which-- whether Charles wants to believe him but is afraid to let himself, or if Charles doesn’t want to trust him but doesn’t know how to object.  
  
It can’t matter.  Not for this.  Not right now.  
  
“Then believe me.”  Nothing.  “Charles?”  
  
Somehow, that’s all it takes for Charles’s body to go slack against his own, for Charles to give himself over.  “I do.  I believe you.”  His voice is rough around the edges, but he swallows, and it comes out a little more smoothly when he says, “You won’t.  Not ever.”  
  
It should make Erik feel better.  
  
 _I know that you could._  
  
He could.  He could change his mind.  He could lie to Charles.  He could blindfold Charles-- tie him up and lock him in his room, and Charles...  would it matter, that Erik had promised not to?  Would he argue?  Would he put up even a facade of protest?  
  
Because Erik doesn’t know what else to do, he lets his fingers catch Charles’s chin so that he can press their lips together.  
  
  
  
  
They spend most of the day on the couch.  Gradually, time regains its properties, and Charles can once again tell the difference between a few seconds and a few minutes.  
  
Eventually, Angel comes back to the living room, along with a few toys to keep Caesar entertained on the floor.  The cooking show turns into a James Bond marathon.  At some point, Chinese delivery appears.  
  
Erik and Angel talk around him, which spares Charles the need to participate.  He doesn’t want to talk.  He just wants to listen, and they let him.  
  
And Erik just keeps holding onto him.  From time to time, he’ll prompt Charles to eat, and Charles will obey, even if he can barely taste the difference between the vegetarian potstickers and the ones with pork.    
  
Thankfully, Erik doesn’t press the matter for long.  What little Charles has already eaten sits like lead in his stomach.  
  
He tries not to think about it.  He lets the whole world collapse down to the steady drone from the television.  The satin flutter of Angel’s voice.  The velvet rumble of Erik’s.  The thump of Erik’s heart in his chest.  The smell of Erik’s soap and skin and Angel’s favourite fabric softener.  The faint shift in terrain of Erik’s body against his own when Erik props up an elbow on the arm of the couch.  
  
They’re all welcome diversion, sparing Charles an obligation to think, keeping his attention from drifting towards the shadows that shred at the fringes of his mind.


	24. Chapter 24

Erik can’t sleep.  He’s only been trying for about ten minutes, but it’s not working.  And if he waits much longer, he’s going to feel bad if wakes Charles up.  
  
Nevertheless, he goes back and forth with himself for a few more minutes, doing his best to keep his hands from toying with the bare skin of Charles’s chest.  Giving it up as a futile effort, Erik tilts his chin down, just enough so that his jaw meets Charles’s hair on the pillow.  
  
“What makes you happy, about being here?”  It’s the most he can bring himself to ask;  asking Charles what frightens him-- there’s been more than enough of that for one fucking day.  
  
Charles turns onto his other side, so that he’s facing towards Erik.  Settling a hand lightly atop Erik’s sternum, he says, “This.”  
  
Certain that there has to be more, Erik waits.  
  
“Watching Angel fight with the waffle machine,”  he adds, sounding as though he can see it perfectly in his head.  “Saturday morning breakfasts, because it’s the most you smile all week.  And those addictive little maple sausage things don’t hurt, either.  Taking care of Caesar.  Getting to read as much as I want, getting to do lessons with Dr. MacTaggert.  Playing chess with you, even though I never win.”  
  
“Not yet,”  Erik finds himself pointing out.  
  
Charles chuckles against his skin.  “It makes me happy that you took me to the fundraiser.”  
  
Erik manages not to tense up about it;  they haven’t really discussed what happened afterwards, but it seems silly to get terribly worked up about it.  Especially now, as Charles has initiated similar vignettes since then.  Similar, except for the way he pursues his own release, and the fact that Erik knows well enough to keep his hands to himself.  
  
“You really kind of like parties, don’t you?”  
  
“Yes,”  Charles admits.  “I mean, the fundraiser, in particular, because of the Babishes.  They were a big a part of that.  But I do, and I know you don’t--”  
  
“They’re not so bad,”  he says.  Regardless of how quiet it was, it had been effective in quieting Charles down.  “Not with you around to referee.”  
  
Erik can feel the way Charles’s smile deepens a little.  “Well.  It’s a somewhat selfish endeavour.  You do look good in a proper suit.”  
  
Erik smiles, but it doesn’t last long before it fades into something near a grimace.  He knows he’s going to regret this.  “Azazel’s firm holds an annual party.”  
  
“Really?”


	25. Edie Eisenhardt

**Twenty-Six Years Ago**  
  
“Where are you going?”  Max asks when his mother starts pulling on her coat.  
  
“To work, I told you--”  
  
“But you just got _back_ from work.”  He doesn’t mean to whinge, but it comes out that way, all the same.  
  
She stops what she’s doing, purse left on the counter as she drags out the chair just next to him.    
  
“I told you I was going to have to get another job.  Not forever, just for a little while, while Papa’s sick.  Remember?”  There’s something about her gentle voice that has Max looking back to his math worksheet.  
  
“I could get a job,”  he says quietly, half-worried she’ll hear him and half-worried she won’t.  
  
“Absolutely not-- you already have a job!  And it’s what?”  
  
“To do well in school,”  he recites with all due reluctance.  
  
“To do well in school,”  she nods.  “Now, I’ll tell you what.  If you promise to get all your homework done, you can ride the bus with me to the hospital and do it there.  Rachel can bring you home when her shift is over.”  
  
  
  
  
“Mrs. Eisenhardt?  We need to see you for just a moment.”  The man at the door isn’t wearing a lab coat.  He doesn’t look like a doctor.  He’s wearing a suit and a smile that makes Max want to frown.  
  
“You be good,”  his mother says as she rises from her seat on the other side of his father’s hospital bed.  
  
“She’s an amazingly strong woman, you mother.”  
  
“Yeah,”  Max says, pride puffing up his chest a little.  He wants to say that his father’s strong, too, but his father doesn’t look it right now.  It’s weird.  His father looks thin, and tired.  The full feeling in his chest starts draining away.  
  
“But she counts on you, too.”  Max doesn’t know why, but he wants to argue.  “She’s always going to need you.  That’s important.  Good boys take care of their mothers when they need it.”  
  
Well.  That makes sense, Max guesses.  With his father in the hospital, his mother needed him to take out the trash.  Which he always did.  Sometimes even without being asked.  
  
“I take out the trash,” he assures his father, at the same time his mother comes back.  She’s taking her seat again, and she looks pretty tired, too.  “And even when you come back home, I still can.”  
  
He wants to help.  He can help-- he can do things.  And sometimes, when people are in the hospital for a long time, even when they get out, it still takes them a while to get better.  And Max’s father has been in this room for three months.  
  
“My dearest Edie,”  his father says, taking his hand in hers.  
  
She smiles, but there’s nothing happy about it.  Even though she’s not crying, her eyes are puffy and red.  Like maybe she was crying, a few minutes ago.  
  
Max likes hearing his father say that.  He knows it’s been carved onto the inside of her wedding ring.  He’s seen it, when she takes it off.  She used to only do that when she was going to be trussing up a chicken, but she does it more and more often now, when she thinks Max isn’t watching.  She doesn’t do anything with it, she just turns it over in her hands a few times before slipping it back on.  
  
Maybe it’s because they haven’t had a family dinner in a while.  
  
He wonders if it says _‘My dearest Jakob_ ’ on the inside of his father’s wedding band.  There’s no way to know-- his father never takes his off.  
  
  
  
  
It’s what the put on his tombstone.  
  
 _Jakob Eisenhardt:  Dearest Husband and Father_  
  
  
  
  
“Edie, you can’t sign this.”  Rachel can’t help saying it, and she doesn’t understand how her brother David can stay silent.  
  
It’s the three of them around Edie’s kitchen table; Max has long since been put to bed.  They haven’t bothered with many lights, but the white paper seems jarring against the blue vinyl of the tablecloth. Atop all the fine print, the Schmidt Pharmaceuticals logo stains the letterhead.  
  
“It’s just a labour contract,” Edie says, as evenly as she’s able.  
  
“It’s still a _contract_.  Do you know anyone who ever actually managed to pay off their debts?”  Rachel presses.  “Once you’re in that system, there’s no--”  
  
“And I should do what?  Do nothing?  Wait for the interest to start piling up?  Wait for the bill collectors, and then the debt collectors, and the _othe_ r collectors to just come and take Max?”  Both Rachel and David are silent.  “I’m not going to lose him, too.”  
  
“You’re going to lose him, all the same,”  David finally says.  “They’re not going to let you see him.”  
  
“I’ll be able to write to him.”  
  
“Edie--”  But Rachel doesn’t know what else to say.  But she can’t both speak and keep from crying, so silence settles over them again.  Thick and suffocating.  
  
Edie opens her mouth to force in a breath.  “Better he be with you, than with a collar around his neck to pay off his parents’ debts.”  
  
“So instead, it’ll be you, slaving away for the people who played a hand in driving you into debt in the first place.  You should leave.  Just pack him up, and try to get to California,”  Rachel tries, knowing it’s a lost cause.  
  
“What kind of life is that for him?  Running, hiding, always a few wrong turns from-- no.  If we run, and they find us, they’ll take him, too.  I know they will.  Companies like these, it’s not like it’s some private owner.  They have money, they have people who handle their debt collection.  He won’t be a work Pet.  And he won’t be a fugitive.  He’s going to be free.  I’m his _mother_.  I can do that for him.”  
  
Rachel has to cover her mouth and squeeze her eyes shut.  
  
This can’t be happening.  None of them can even really understand how it’s come to this.  
  
Rachel nods, reaching her free hand over to cling at Edie’s left.  
  
Leaving Edie’s right hand free to pick up the pen.  
  
  
  
  
 **Six Years Later**  
  
 _Thanks, Jason.  Earlier this afternoon, a chemical fire broke out today at the Schmidt Pharmaceuticals compound just outside Wilmington, Delaware.  As you can see behind me, most of the fire seems to be dealt with, and the fire chief says that the main concern now is any structural damage that might have been done to one of the Pets’s barracks; if the structure collapses, they say it’s likely to crash into the adjacent structures.  In the interest of safety, the surrounding buildings have been evacuated._  
  
 _Great, that’s good to hear.  Now, an hour ago, we had no reports of any fatalities, any update on that?_  
  
 _A few injuries, but thus far we have no confirmed fatalities._  
  
 _Any news on when they’re going to let those kids go home?  For any viewers just joining us, when the fire broke out, a class of middle schoolers--_  
  
 _Eighth grade science class, Jason._  
  
 _\-- a class of eighth grade science students were on a field trip, touring the facility.  Last we heard, a few kids were still missing._  
  
 _From what I can tell, they’re still looking for one student.  Until he’s found, school officials are only letting children leave the grounds with their parents.  So anyone whose parents can’t be reached are, unfortunately, stuck here until the kid can be found._  
  
 _Do we have a name or a picture?_  
  
 _Nothing we can release without his guardians’ consent.  Also missing are three chemists and a handful of corporate Pets._  
  
 _More details on that, coming up.  We’re going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we’ll have a Schmidt Pharm spokesman Sebastian Shaw in the studios to walk us through what happened._


	26. Chapter 26

“How’s Logan?”  Charles asks as soon as the elevator opens.  
  
There’s a faint hesitation before Angel says, “Better.  You know, it’s slow going.  Plus, he’s a miserable fuck when he’s stuck in bed, and painkillers make him even more surly than usual.”  
  
Glancing up from his topology notes, Charles watches as she sets a stack of reclaimed movies onto the low table that sits below the flat screen.  
  
She doesn’t like hiding things from him.  Or at least, she doesn’t like hiding whatever she’s hiding at the moment.  Charles knows it wasn’t a car accident.  Just as he knows that’s what he’s meant to believe.  Given no alternative, it’s easily done.  
  
“Dreadful things, car accidents,” he murmurs, turning back to his notes.  
  
He can hear Angel’s pause.  Hear the foundations of her resolve starting to shudder.  “Charles--”  
  
“It was a car accident,” he says, the words easy and steady.  Glancing up, he gives her a small nod before he drops his gaze once more.  “I thought I’d stop by to see him, just to check in.  See if I can get him to take some vitamins or something.”  
  
Angel’s scoffing chuckle is enough to voice her doubt, but after a moment, she says, “Yeah.  Probably a good idea.”  She’s on her way towards the stairs when she calls over her shoulder, her armour back in place, “Maybe if we hid them in peanut butter, like with Caesar?”  
  
  
  
  
“You want a pretzel?” Erik asks flatly, as though Charles is having him on.  
  
Charles resists the urge to fiddle with his collar.  Even if he weren’t with Erik, it would have been inappropriate to do in public, even in a park.  He even manages to avoid shifting his weight from foot to foot.  
  
It’s just that he has precious little experience to rely upon for asking Erik for things.  Angel is the household’s de facto chief financial officer.  She handles procuring groceries and textbooks and replacement toothbrushes and so on.  
  
It’s harder than he expects it to be to make himself say,  “Yes, please.”  
  
Although Erik seems to derive no actual pleasure from making him ask for things, Charles has given up on grasping the rationale behind some of Erik’s behaviours.  With Sebastian, it had been so much easier.  
  
Well, no-- with Sebastian, it had never been necessary.  Sebastian had such a fondness for spoiling Charles that it been almost impossible to want for something before Sebastian offered it up.  On the rare occasion when it happened, and it went beyond Charles’s monthly allowance, Sebastian had liked for Charles to hint.  To mention, and look hopeful, to give Sebastian the opportunity to offer himself.  He’d liked it when Charles fussed about the expense of things, because he’d enjoyed telling Charles how irrelevant it was.  
  
And it’s not as though Charles feels _deprived_ , it’s just that Erik doesn’t give him an allowance.  Not that he _needs_ one.  Not really.  Except that the fact that he doesn’t have one leads to moments like this, where he can’t tell if Erik is amused or annoyed.  
  
He only eats half his pretzel.  
  
  
  
  
They’re only two floors away from Logan’s when Charles reaches out to press the button for it.  He can feel Erik’s gaze upon him, and he doesn’t dare turn to meet it.  
  
“What’re you doing?”  he asks.  
  
“Usually I get one and he gets one.  Angel says he’s finicky about eating, so there’s no reason to think he’d eat a whole one.”  There’s no one else he could be talking about, and the half-a-pretzel is still in Charles’s coat pocket.  
  
A quick glance at Erik reveals a perfectly unsurprising wall of displeasure.  
  
“I don’t know that he’s up for company.”  Erik’s voice has gone low, but there’s not threat to it.  No edge of warning telling Charles not to press his luck.  “Certainly not up for talking--”  
  
“Oh, for god’s sake, I’m not stupid,”  Charles huffs, because exasperation seems to register better with Erik than sense and reason sometimes.  “And I’m not a child.  What I don’t need to know, I don’t _need_ to know.”  
  
The elevator chimes and the doors slide open in the wake of Erik’s stony silence.  
  
Caesar follows dutifully, coming to a halt when Charles stops to look back at Erik, who stays put in the elevator.  
  
“It’s not really any of my concern, is it?” he asks, the moment the doors start to close.  
  
It’s petty, he knows.  But really--  Erik should know better.  Something about it grates at Charles as he walks down the hall towards Logan’s door.  Does Erik really think he’d stand there and demand to know details?  Like he’s Angel?  Does Erik truly see so little difference between them?  
  
Or worse-- does he think Charles would try to extract that sort of information out of Logan?  In _his_ condition?  
  
Charles wishes he hadn’t eaten as much of that pretzel as he had.


	27. Chapter 27

Normally, Erik likes the silence.  
  
Then again, the silence shared between himself and Charles over chess is simply that:  shared.  This-- there’s an edge to it.  It seems naive to think it’s really to do with Logan.  As with so many things, it’s easy enough to follow the proverbial bread crumbs back to Shaw.  Or at least, it’s easy enough, with Azazel’s words still rattling around in his head.  
  
While he wishes he could lay all of this at Shaw’s feet, Erik’s not that stupid.  His own participation is just something of a bitter pill to swallow.  
  
Which is why it takes him the better part of an hour to actually bring it up.  
  
“It may have been... inappropriate for me to press you for information about Shaw.”  It’s almost funny, in a sick sort of way, that he half-expects Charles to argue without objecting - a skill seemingly unique to Charles - on the grounds that an owner ought to be able to demand whatever he wants of his Pets.  
  
“At first, I found the request somewhat strange.”  Erik doesn’t dare do more than raise his brow.  Charles’s attention is ensnared by the board for a moment, and he starts to think Charles has said all he cares to on the matter.  Once he moves his rook, however, he settles back in his chair.  “Few owners keep their Pets indefinitely, regardless of how earnest their intent at the beginning.”  
  
The pause, this time, Erik is certain is bait, giving Erik the chance to antagonize a perfectly accurate generalization.  Knowing it for what it is makes it easier to ignore.  
  
“So, I found myself thinking that, were I an owner, what would my concerns be?  Insolence, entitlement, bad habits-- they can all be trained away.  But trustworthiness is a different matter altogether.  I don’t think you can train that into someone.  So, with the question, _Is my Pet trustworthy?_ what better time to test him than at the beginning?”  
  
“I don’t underst-”  
  
“I thought you wanted to see what I’d do, if questioned about a prior owner.  That, or that you were secretly working for Shaw in some far more elaborate test.”  For Erik’s part, he’s too fixated on keeping down his dinner to much else but stare.  “And, if I turned over information about my previous owner, how could you ever trust me to keep _your_ confidences?  To protect you?”  
  
It makes the previous day make both more sense and less, all at once.  If Erik can overlook the grizzly notion that Charles had somehow managed to fear that everything going on around him was some insane hoax, what remains is hardly more comforting.  
  
He doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean, if Charles had thought his trustworthiness was being put to the test, and he caved.  And he doesn’t dare suppose; the more he understands about how Charles sees the world, the less he wants to.  But he craves it all the same.  If he doesn’t understand, he can’t do anything.  Can’t navigate his way with Charles.  Can’t correct what’s been bent and mangled.  
  
“Some say it’s a Pet’s duty to love his master,” Charles offers, in that perfectly neutral fashion that Erik has come to realise means Charles is convinced there is a Wrong Answer-- and that it’s the person asking the question who gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong.    
  
“So it’s as simple as that?” he muses, making an effort to keep his tone conversational.  Sarcasm only plays well with Charles when he’s relaxed, and questions like this only ever seem to have him drawing up his shields.  
  
It must work well enough, because Charles lifts his gaze, as if considering Erik for a moment.  
  
“It’s not at all simple.”  There’s an earnestness there that Erik doubts is fake, if only because ‘earnest’ isn’t a facade Shaw likely had much interest in cultivating.  “If it were, a Pet’s love would be a fickle thing.  Love without loyalty is meaningless-- it’s just a matter of convenience.  And to love someone, simply because they own you... it’s cheap, Erik.  Hollow.  That?  That’s just playing a part.”  
  
Of all the things he might have expected Charles to say, he’d never imagined _that_.  He doesn’t want to wonder about whether or not Charles thinks he loves Erik.  And he’s not deluded enough to think it’s exclusively self-interested, to wish he could sever whatever might persist between Charles and Shaw, even if it’s only in Charles’s head.  
  
The silence lapses over them comfortably enough, but it doesn’t last for more than a few moves.  
  
“I imagine it’s rather like marriage.”  Erik’s gaze jerks itself up to meet Charles’s; it’s disturbing, to see him sitting there, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, resting one elbow on the arm of his chair to contemplatively prop his chin on his lightly curled fist, academically musing on the finer points of slavery.  “To leave one provider, to leave someone who is obligated to provide for you and care for you-- to entrust yourself another who pledges to do the same....”    
  
The wistfulness fades from Charles’s features, but in its wake lingers a light in Charles’s eyes that Erik manages to forget comes about from talking about his legal status.    
  
But there’s something to the curve of Charles’s mouth that keeps him from chiming in.  After another moment of study, the concentrated furrow of Erik’s brow smooths itself out.    
  
“You’re fucking with me,” he accuses amiably.  
  
Charles’s smile sharpens, but remains small.  “You do seem to enjoy it.”  
  
“From you, perhaps,” Erik hears himself concede, his tongue running ahead of his intent to insist that no one else would agree with Charles.  Maybe Angel, but even she has a knack for working his last nerve sometimes.  “Am I that transparent?”  
  
Bishop held carefully between his thumb and middle finger, Charles pauses.  Or at least, Erik hopes it’s a pause; it possess none of the back-burner terror Erik associates with Charles’s hesitations.  “Nothing about you is transparent,” he says before setting down his piece.  If it weren’t for the rueful tug at the corners of Charles’s mouth, it would have been easy for Erik to dismiss the words as nothing more than Charles slipping in a compliment.  “I do hope, however, that I’m starting to catch onto a few of your.... quirks.”  
  
“Quirks?” he repeats, taking Charles’s second rook.  
  
“You have a curious taste for insubordination among your Pets.”  Erik thinks that’s cheating, because it’s not as though he’s ever demanded anyone under his roof yield to his will on principle alone.  “But one must wonder why-- it’s not vanity.  You’re not the sort to cultivate strong-willed Pets for the pleasure of disciplining them, calling them to heel.”    
  
A hair’s breadth away from feeling his stomach bottom out, all Erik can do is was as Charles insouciantly surveys the board, as if discussing the weather.  It’s all he lets himself do, because he can’t - absolutely cannot - let his imagination run away with the idea of putting Charles over his knee.  
  
“Perhaps you simply detest stagnation.”  Charles’s eyes flit over the pieces.  “And as such, you enjoy being perpetually questioned.  It’s not uncommon, for men of your stature to prefer sounding boards to yes-men.  Pets have no career to worry about but yours, so they might, understandably, provide useful feedback.”  Erik had never thought of it in such terms, but there’s sense to it.  He watches as Charles’s teeth catch a tuft of his lower lip, certain that if he interjects, Charles will fall silent.  “Or maybe you’re just bored.  Or insane.  Or perhaps you’re a narcissist, whose ego wouldn’t be satisfied by owning docile Pets.”  Charles glances up, and Erik can exhale, because the slight arch of his brow is perfectly teasing.  
  
Charles is joking, right now, but it’s a dark sort of humour, one only made possible by the fact that such realities exist.  Somewhere.  This is what, when Erik was much younger, he’d imagined having a crush on someone would feel like:  wanting to throw up and and wanting to kiss someone, all at the same time.  
  
It’s wretched.  
  
The bishop is back in Charles’s grasp, though Erik’s all but forgotten the game.  “If I had to place my bets, I’d say that you simply enjoy being challenged,”  Charles finishes, making his move and settling back.  His fingertips catch the rim of his glass and he’s about to finish off his scotch before he seems to remember himself, and says, “Which is why I suspect you enjoy this,”  a nod to the chessboard, “more than me letting you win.”  
  
Scouring the board, Erik’s left to realise that Charles has moved moved him into checkmate.    
  
Much as he wants not to, Erik finds himself chuckling.  
  
“Care to try again?”  Charles invites.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For every bit of progress I make on The Party, something else seems to crop up.

**New Text Message**  
Angel:  Come here and tell me if this looks stupid.  I’m in my room.  
  
  
“I can’t believe you’re making me to go to this,”  Angel murmurs, distracted as she inspects her own reflection.  
  
Really, she doesn’t sound all that put out.  It helps, he’s sure, that she looks amazing.  Black dress that shimmers, somehow, long sleeves and a high collar.  And then there’s the back-- or rather, then there isn’t.  Nearly her entire back is bare, elegantly framed by subtle drape that curves just down to the small of her back.  
  
If Angel weren’t Angel - if she weren’t the experiential equivalent of an adopted little sister - Erik might have been inclined to appraise the image in front of him as something more than simply a lovely girl in a lovely dress.  
  
“Where did you get that?”  he asks, because it doesn’t look like anything he’s seen her pick out before.  The company holiday party isn’t nearly so formal, but Angel’s always seemed to go in a bit more for the little black dress.  And while this is still a black dress, it’s... different.  
  
“I didn’t, actually,”  she says, catching his gaze in the mirror.  “Charles did-- sort of.”  
  
“--What?”  It’s the ‘sort of’ that throws him.  On the most basic level, it should have been obvious;  from one view it’s tailored and conservative, and from the other it’s provocative bordering on salacious.  Charles does it with layers of whipcord tailoring and glimpses of his pale throat.  Erik had thought Charles’s clothes had been largely of Angel’s selection, but in retrospect, the idea seems absurd.  
  
“I dunno,”  Angel says, shrugging as she switches from black heels to black ankle boots that look decidedly more comfortable.  “It’s like some personal shopping service.”  
  
“Like Sean?”  It sounds roughly the same, anyway.  There’s all sorts of services that cater to Pets.  Everything from dressers and groomers to personal trainers and dieticians.  
  
“I guess,”  she says at her boots.  
  
Were he her, he’d go with the boots, but Angel seems dissatisfied.  
  
“It’s the same people he got your suits through, for the Babish party.  Except they don’t ever talk about clothing.  I mean, sure, there’s measurements a stuff,” she quickly adds.  “But all he really did was talk on the phone about my personality.”  
  
Not a bad way to go about things, Erik has to suppose, if this is the result.  “You look stunning.”  
  
“It’s how you got your gray suit, for the last one.”  
  
Erik tries not to ask, about how Charles had described him to some total stranger.  It creeps up on Erik, the uncertainty about how Charles sees him.  
  
“Are you sleeping with him?” she asks, tugging off the boots, one at a time.  
  
It’s a stupid question.  “You know I am.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant.”  
  
Oh.  
  
“Erik, come on.  It’s... it’s fine.”  
  
The caution in her tone is scalding.  
  
“' _Fine_ '?  You’re the one who said I shouldn’t avoid touching him,”  he snaps.  She’d said something like that, he’s sure.  
  
Angel turns.  She stands there, barefoot, in her ballgown.  And she smiles, just a little.  “You like him.”  
  
How the hell that’s supposed to matter, Erik doesn’t deign to consider.  
  
“Angel-- the things he says, sometimes...”  It’s almost impossible to tell, when Charles is serious and when he’s joking, and it pricks at Erik, that he can’t bring himself to ask.  
  
“He has a weird sense of humour,”  Angel supplies.  
  
“Sometimes I have no idea when he’s joking.”  
  
“It’s anybody’s guess, really.”


	29. Chapter 29

“Erik, you arrived with two lovely Pets,”  Azazel says, seeming to have materialised from thin air behind Erik.  “And yet here you are, all by yourself.  Did you lose them?”  
  
Erik huffs a half-amused sound through his nose.  “Angel and Charles are availing themselves of your bar.”  
  
“Ah, yes.”  Azazel moves to stand next to Erik, though his gaze wanders to the other side of the room.  
  
There’s more to it, of course.  Azazel really isn’t one for small talk.  Whether his penchant for it is a cultural thing or a lawyer thing is hard to say, but even when it sounds like small talk, it’s not.  So Erik just waits.  
  
“Charles does well at these sorts of things,”  Azazel mentions.  “But then, he always did.”  
  
It probably isn’t intended to be an opening, but Erik takes it for one, anyway.  “What was he like, when he was at these sorts of things with Shaw?”  
  
After a sip from his glass, Azazel’s head shifts from side to side, as if the various considerations tug him this way and that.  “About the same.  The treatment he receives is what has changed.”  
  
“How are people treating him?”  he asks immediately.  He hasn’t noticed anyone treating Charles any different from any other Pet--  then again, there are pieces of the last party that get decidedly fuzzy in his memory.  
  
Azazel’s chuckle casts a slight shadow over Erik’s mood.  “His owner’s treatment,” he clarifies.  “Shaw enjoyed the spotlight, and Charles was always a good way to lure its attention.  And of course, he liked to use Charles to infuriate people he did not care for.”  
  
Imagining Charles infuriating anyone--  well, imagining Charles infuriate anyone from Shaw’s crowd of hangers-on proves impossible.  Even were he given some kind of order to aggravate someone, Erik can’t picture how Charles would even begin to go about it.  
  
His arched brow pulls another chuckle from Azazel.  Azazel, on the other hand, makes a prime candidate for infuriation.  
  
“To discourage people from attempting to use his Pet to gain access to him, Charles was not permitted to speak to someone unless Shaw gave him permission first.”  He says it so dismissively that Erik has to wonder if that’s some sort of absurd standard practice.  “But, if someone managed to worm their way into a conversation, Shaw would interrupt them, ignore them, to turn and fawn over his little Pet.  Quite embarrassing for them, of course.”  
  
“Fawn over him,”  he repeats flatly.  
  
Azazel shakes his head, as though Erik’s the one being difficult.  Gesturing a little with his glass, “Talk to him, touch him, feed him things--”  
  
“Shaw _fed_ him?  In public?”  The words seem to cling to his tongue, but Erik manages to dispel them, regardless.  The idea of Shaw’s fingers anywhere near Charles’s mouth registers as mildly infuriating.  And patently obscene.    
  
His gaze snaps over to the bar, if only to make sure Charles is still there;  he hardly wants Charles to wander into the conversation, but thankfully, there Charles remains-- trying to fend of Angel’s attempts to get him to try some of her White Russian.  
  
When he looks back to Azazel, he’s almost startled to find Azazel looking right back at him.  
  
“Have you thought about what to do with Charles, once he has served your purpose?”  
  
“What?”   Even as Erik says it, he’s sure that this is the reason Azazel had come over in the first place.  
  
“Well, he is not so much suited your side-project.”  It’s an easy and necessary sidestep from words like _liberation_ and _emancipation_ , given the gallery of pro-Pet enthusiasts around them.  “Perhaps you should consider an alternative long-range placement.”  
  
Alternative.  “You mean another owner.”  Erik hesitates only a moment before he makes himself add,  “You have someone in mind?”  
  
The whole conversation is starting to feel surreal.  
  
“A man gets to a certain age and status, and people begin to wonder why he does not have a Pet of his own,” is all Azazel says.  
  
For fuck’s sake.  “You mean _you_?  In your entire adult life, you’ve never had a Pet, and you want one _now_?”  
  
Azazel shrugs.  “He would be good for parties.”  
  
Erik’s expression shifts with all the subtlety of a cat laying back its ears.  
  
“I told him I wouldn’t sell him.”  It’s as simple as that.  It has to be.  
  
“Surely he could be--”  
  
“Just what the hell is so special about--”  
  
“Charles,”  Azazel says warmly, looking past Erik.  
  
Erik’s startled - and worried about having been overheard - enough that he doesn’t have time to wonder whether or not it’s too warm a greeting.  
  
“And the lovely Angel,”  Azazel adds smoothly.  “Even more lovely tonight.”  
  
“That’s just ‘cause you’ve been drinking,”  Angel smirks, but there’s no barb in it.  “Nice shindig, though.”  
  
“Very nice,”  Charles tacks on, holding a dirty martini out to Erik, offering a small smile along with it.  It’s enough to ease Erik’s concerns.  
  
Only after trying his drink does Erik think he can manage a smile for Charles that doesn’t more resemble a grimace.    
  
“Erik, would you mind if I danced with your Angel?”  Azazel asks.    
  
It’s necessary, in public, but Erik still glances at Angel before answering.  The roll of her eyes isn’t scathing enough to be sincere.  
  
“At your own risk,”  Erik says.  
  
As Azazel leads Angel towards the designated dance area, Erik hears Charles mutter into his scotch, “Should have made him sign a waiver,”  and he has to laugh.  Just a little.  Because Charles probably isn’t wrong, and they all know it.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For **JerseyDevil74** , I tried to make this as un-clifffhanger-y as possible.

“You’re good at this,”  Erik says, pocketing a business card whilst Charles holds his drink.  
  
It’s hard to say where Erik picked up the habit of making observations rather than direct statements.  
  
Charles just smiles a little.  To articulate some platitude would probably just make Erik uncomfortable.  A moment later, however, Erik adds,  “Creighton called the other day.”  
  
The name rings a certain bell, but not one Charles can place.  “Who?”  
  
“We met him at the fundraiser, the guy from NASA,”  Erik says, with that odd tension on his tongue that crops up so often when Erik discusses the fundraiser.  Charles neatly lets the opportunity to consider why pass him by; it’s easily done, when the word we seems perfectly content to just reverberate through his skull.  
  
“Ah,”  he says approvingly.  “Well, for quite some time, the two of you were engrossed in a conversation that might have driven me to drink.”  For a scant second, Charles just lets Erik stand there, looking uneasy, before he shrugs.  “For improvisational technical terminology to work, it seems everyone involved needs to be approximately the same level of utterly sloshed.”  
  
Erik smiles, the smallest bit, before the rest of his posture relaxes.  Knowing that Erik sometimes still gets a bit tense when the topic of the fundraiser comes up makes it no less peculiar.  
  
“Well, how about this time, _you_ get embarrassingly drunk,” he suggests, with a smooth sort of sharpness that somehow doesn’t lack a bit of warmth.  
  
Tipping back the last of his scotch, Charles simply holds out his now-empty glass and adopts his best expression of hopeful innocence.  
  
  
Erik shouldn’t find it as amusing as he does.  He probably shouldn’t get Charles another drink.  But it’s not as though Charles has had more than couple.  Three at the most.  And it isn’t as though he’s actually going to try to get Charles drunk.  
  
Without another word, he indulgently plucks the glass from Charles’s hand.  
  
Not that he gets more than a few steps in the direction of the bar before Charles’s hand slips into the crook of his elbow.  
  
“Wait,” comes Charles’s hushed voice, though he doesn’t really try to forcibly stop Erik’s progress.  He rushes to get out under his breath, “You’d rather not go over there.”  
  
It’s jarringly abrupt.    
  
Charles doesn’t usually just come out and say things like that.  It’s enough to stop Erik in his tracks.  When he looks over, Charles is staring at him, as if afraid to look anywhere else.  
  
Every shadow in the room seems to get a little heavier; it’s impossible to imagine anyone but Shaw would inspire the obvious unease in Charles.  
  
But it’s not Shaw’s voice that calls out, “...Charles?”  
  
Erik can see Charles’s lashes dip just a tiny bit, as if he’d like nothing better than to just shut his eyes and shut out the world.  Since it isn’t Shaw, Erik doesn’t bother looking away from Charles when he takes a step closer, bowing his head so he can murmur,  “His name is Cain Marko.  And you promised Angel you wouldn’t hit anyone.”  
  
  
“And here I thought Emma had had your head mounted on a wall, or something.”  Cain’s smirk is begging, absolutely begging, to be interrupted by someone’s fist.  
  
Charles doesn’t say a thing.  If Erik had to guess, by Charles alone, he wouldn’t be able to tell that anyone had even come close to them.  
  
“Excuse me?”  Erik says, turning his shoulders just a bit towards Cain.  
  
“Ah.  So you must be Erik Lehnsherr,”  Cain drawls, as if Erik’s name is an insult in and of itself.  “The one keeping Charles under house arrest.  It’s tragic, really.”  
  
Cain clearly wants to be asked why.  Erik just glares.  
  
“Oh, come on, Lehnsherr.  Someone like you, you keep him all to yourself while he’s still pretty enough to be worth looking at.  Hardly fair.  And if you’re not going to make proper use of him, why not sell him off to someone who will?”  
  
It’s a suggestion Erik has heard two times too many in one evening.  “I’d sooner sell my home.”  
  
Erik doesn’t know if Charles relaxes or if he’s tensing up, but whatever it is, it seems like an improvement, so Erik doesn’t bother to care about the fact that people around them are starting to quiet down.  Starting to turn and look.  And listen.  
  
“Oh, don’t look so relieved, Charlie-- at least _I’d_ have let you go to your mother’s funeral.”  
  
For one excruciating moment, Erik fears he won’t be able to stop himself from demanding an explanation, but it turns out Cain can’t resist the opportunity to twist the knife himself.  
  
“Surely even you read the papers, and no doubt by now he’s told you about Sharon-- I hear Charles is _ever_  so proud of his pedigree.”    
  
Erik is plenty accustomed enough to blathering, condescending owners, but this is something else entirely.    
  
A glance to his side is all he needs to see the muscles along Charles’s neck tighten, like they’re desperately trying to work his features, but his face has become that perfect marble mask, giving away nothing, shutting himself off from the world so entirely that Charles barely even looks human.  
  
“Not that you’d know it, given his manners,”  Cain goes on, his voice suffocatingly smug.  “Given that he can even turn to acknowledge his betters.”  
  
Before Charles has a chance to think about moving an inch, Erik’s hand clamps a vise-hold of his elbow; it’s no surprise that Charles goes instantly rigid once more.  It’s a hesitant thing, the way Charles’s gaze ventures in Erik’s direction, the way it climbs up Erik’s chest to look him square in the eye.  He doesn’t know whether he ought to strangle himself or Charles when those blue eyes seem to hold a wealth of gratitude.  
  
His voice somehow comes out both smooth and sharp when he says, “You must be accustomed to a lower class of Pet; he doesn’t have permission to speak to the tedious and insignificant.”  
  
Erik doesn’t even know why he says it.  It’s utter bullshit.  But it’s the only way to insult bastards like Marko.  
  
Although he remembers turning from Marko, and the party, he can’t quite recall how he wound up waiting at the curb for the valet-- how he wound up waiting with Charles tucked against his chest.  He ought to feel bad, he’s sure, for taking comfort in carding his fingers through the soft waves of Charles’s hair.  His conscience assuages itself with the way Charles’s body has melted against his own.  
  
Only once they're in the safe and quiet of the car does Erik realise that the hushed wisps of sound passing Charles’s lips have been a litany of, “Thank you, _thank_ you.”  
  
“Charles, it’s fine.  You don’t have to-- Look, no one should be subjected that jackass.”  
  
He doesn’t understand why Charles looks like he’s been slapped, why he curls in on himself in the passenger seat and looks away from Erik, out to the street.  
  
Charles is silent for the rest of the ride home.  Erik doesn’t blame him, and he doesn’t press.  Of course, it has to be different for Charles, who hasn’t seen his mother since-- hell, Erik doesn’t even know when, but it’s been years.  And he’s seen the brand on Charles’s back.  That ‘X’ trapped within a hexagon.  Erik knows what that means.  But still.  Even if Charles's mother had sold him, he clearly hadn’t had any idea that his mother had died until Marko, whoever the fuck he is, had brought it up.  
  
Erik keeps waiting for Charles to falter.  To buckle.  But the quiet elevator ride up to the penthouse is spent with Erik on one side of the elevator and Charles on the other, just as feircely closed off as he had been at the party.  
  
Charles leaves the elevator before Erik does.  He doesn’t take off anything-- not his coat, not his collar.  He just heads for the stairs.  Erik follows suit, wondering if perhaps Charles just needs someplace more private.  But when they reach the top of the stairs, Charles mumbles, “Goodnight, Erik,” before turning towards his own bedroom, the one he hasn’t slept in for weeks, and shuts the door behind him.  
  
Leaving Erik alone in the hall.


	31. Chapter 31

Erik is officially through with parties.  They might not be completely excruciating, but the aftermath is killing him.  He’s not taking Charles to another; given the trend, they’d be lucky to both make it out in one piece.  
  
He even regrets not getting ridiculously drunk.  Then he could have punched Marko.  Or at the very least, he’d have just passed out at some point.  A few hours ago, going to sleep had seemed like a bad idea.  Charles hadn’t emerged from his room.  And after dragging out his shower for as long as humanly possible, Charles still hadn’t turned up, despite the fact that Erik had left his bedroom door wide open.  
  
It’s still wide open.  The light’s still on.  And Erik’s still sitting downstairs.  Waiting.  Fuck if he knows what for, though.  
  
The sky beyond the large windows of the living room is starting to lighten when the elevator opens.  
  
“Forget something?”  Angel smirks, letting her coat slide into a heap on the floor.  The strappy contraptions of her shoes follow, clattering against the floor  
  
“I knew Azazel would get you home,” he grumbles.  Well, perhaps he hadn’t _known_ , but he’d trusted.  And it’s not as though that trust had been misplaced.  After all, here she is, untying the thick ribbon from around her neck.  
  
Were it not for the fact that dawn seems to be threatening at the sky, her leaving a mess by the door would have seemed strange.  Angel’s not the tidiest person in the whole world, but there’s usually some sort of methodology to her clutter.  
  
“Well, it did give me a little time,” a lot of time, “to do a bit of digging,”  she concedes, flopping down on the other end of the sofa.  “He still asleep?”  
  
“I don’t know.  He’s still in his room,”  Erik offers.  “Been there since we got back.”  Angel’s silent for a moment.  And then a few more moments.  Enough for Erik to wonder if she ever intends to elaborate.  So he says, “I did a bit of looking around-- nothing about a Sharon Xavier.”  
  
Angel rakes her fingers through her hair, rubbing at the crown of her head.  “Wrong last name.  She changed it, when she remarried.  You’ve got to look for Sharon Marko.”  She looks tired in a way that has little to do with how long she’s been awake.  
  
“Marko.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“As in _Cain_ Marko.”  
  
“ _Yes_ \-- well, okay, no, he married Cain's father--”  
  
“But Cain _has_ to be older than Charles.”  
  
“Step-brothers, genius.”  
  
As if that makes it better.  Well, all right, the idea of Charles’s step-brother leering at him isn’t quite so worrisome as a biological relation would be, but all it does is makes the back of Erik’s mind explode with a new deluge of questions.  “When?”  
  
It’s somehow the most significant question; the rest, they can get to later.  He just wants to be able to have _something_ to tell Charles.  Just in case Charles ever comes out of his room.  
  
“When what?”  
  
“When did she die?”  Erik all but bites out, dropping his voice, because knowing his luck, _this_ would be the time Charles opts to stick his head out into the hall.  
  
“Couple of months ago.”  Even though she tries to hide it, she’s sorry to say it.  Sorry to tell him that it had been on his watch, not Shaw’s.  
  
There’s an edging fear in the back of his mind-- how he’d react, if he were to be blindsided with news of his mother’s death.  It takes no effort, no creativity at all, to know what being cut off from her feels like.  If something had happened, if his mother had ever gotten hurt, or sick, no one would have even bothered to let him know.  The letters just would have stopped coming.  Perhaps they’d have started returning the letters he’d sent to her.  
  
What chills his blood and kicks at his stomach is the idea of not knowing.  
  
“How?”  Angel doesn’t bat an eye over how rough the word sounds.  
  
“The obit I pulled up online just said she was sick.  That she’d been sick for a while.  Might be why she was down in Florida-- where they had the memorial service,”  Angel adds.  
  
A self-indulgent relief tries to beckon to Erik.  Florida is practically the other end of the country.  Why would he bother to keep tabs on what’s going on in Florida?  It’s tempting and easy and Erik pushes it away.    
  
Something, however, does stick, and pulls a frown across his mouth.  “Not the funeral?”  
  
“Nothing online said anything about where she’s buried,” Angel says, shaking head.  “Or that she was even buried at all.  Might’ve been cremated.”  
  
Maybe.  
  
“Find out for sure, would you?”  he sighs.  
  
“Yeah.”  For a little while after that they just sit there on the couch.  Erik in his pyjamas and Angel in her gown, feet curled up underneath her.    
  
The sun is creeping up over the horizon before she says, “I’m not making breakfast.”  Which is perfect, because Erik doesn’t feel like eating.  “But maybe later I’ll make soup or something.”  
  
It sounds so harmless.  
  
“No,”  Erik says immediately.  She’s not just going to make ‘soup’-- she’s going to make _his mother’s_ soup.  And then try to feed it to Charles, thinking it’ll make him feel better.  Apart from the fact that it just seems cruel to rub it in Charles’s face, that his own mother is still around, Angel’s never made his mother’s soup for Charles; part of him just doesn’t want Charles to associate the mess they’re in now with his mother’s soup.  
  
It’s stupid.  And trivial.  But even if he’d wanted to take it back, he has no idea how to get out a sound around the tight lump in his throat.  
  
“Okay.”  It’s quiet.  And mild.  “We’ll just order something.”  
  
He nods.  
  
Hesitant fingers curl around his wrist, and he doesn’t pull away.  “There’s no way you could have known.  He was just being a dick.”  
  
Fuck, but the last thing he wants to do is _talk_ about it.  
  
“I’ll handle Caesar for a while, I think.”  She’s still holding onto his wrist.  “If Charles is too...”  
  
“Okay," he repeats, as if by reflex.  "Just don’t-- he hates it when you give Caesar ‘people-food.’  So just--”  
  
“I know, Erik.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my new beta, **estioe**.


	32. Chapter 32

Erik hadn’t told him where they’re going.  He hadn’t told Charles anything other than to get dressed.  Strictly speaking, Erik hadn’t told him what to wear, though pulling out a suit from Charles’s closet made the expectation clear enough.  
  
There seems to be little point in working himself up over what any of it means, what any of it’s for.  The idea that Erik might be planning to punish him pulls a bitter mockery of a laugh from him as he buttons his shirt.  From the bed, Caesar looks up and gives a little whinge.  
  
Normally, Caesar isn’t allowed on the bed, but for the past few evenings Angel has been walking him, and when she brings him home, she just plops him into bed with Charles.  For his part, Charles hasn’t been able to muster the will to tell him to get to his own little bed.  
  
Actually, were he keeping track, he’d have realised that he hasn’t actually said anything aloud since the night of Azazel’s company party.  He’s sure he’s speaking less, but he’s just as certain that his silence hasn’t bothered anyone.  Least of all, Erik.  Or at least, Erik hasn’t said anything.  
  
Erik isn’t going to punish him.  Even Dr. MacTaggert’s absence - Charles has no idea what day it is, but he’s sure his missed at least one day of lessons - likely has more to do with the fact that Erik doesn’t think Charles can handle the strain.  Can’t handle lessons, can’t handle Caesar, can’t handle anything.  
  
Like he’s fragile.  Or defective.  
  
The less they expect of him, the harder it is to pull himself out of bed in the morning.  Meager though the task of getting dressed is, at least it’s something.  
  
He’s clicking his collar into place when it occurs to him Erik might be taking him somewhere to sell him.  The idea should be devastating.  Crippling.  Terrifying.  Charles can’t help but be aware of the possibility - the _likelihood_ , the seeming inevitability - of it, but that awareness doesn’t translate.  It doesn’t touch him.  It just is.  Like sunlight in winter - garishly bright, through the glass of the window, but unable to warm the room.  
  
In the end, the only person it would really make a difference to is himself.  Erik would probably be altogether indifferent.  Angel-- well, he likes to think that Angel would miss him.  And even if Caesar isn’t a person, he’s still...  
  
Something twitches in Charles’s chest.  It’s something of a revelation, that he’d miss Caesar.  While Caesar isn’t even his, there are things Charles would miss that have nothing to do with the intrinsic rewards of good stewardship of a charge.  He would just miss _Caesar_.  It’s different from the idea of missing the books at Sebastian’s.  Different from missing routines and affection.  
  
He doesn’t remember scooping Caesar up into his arms, but Charles finds himself holding Caesar close, as though he’s got any right to try to hold on to what isn’t even his.  And Caesar doesn’t even squirm.  Doesn’t fuss or wriggle-- he just sniffs and noses along Charles’s collar while his free hand smooths back Caesar’s ears.  
  
“You’re such a good little boy,” he whispers, trying to remind himself that Erik would never let something of his mother's go neglected.  “Logan likes you more than he lets on.  Maybe--”  
  
He’s talking out loud to Erik’s mother’s dog.  
  
He probably _is_ defective.  
  
  
  
  
“Would you like to be alone?”  Erik asks.  
  
“I--”  
  
Charles hadn’t been paying attention to where the car had been going.  He hadn’t even realised they were in Westchester until they pulled through the property gates.  
  
Sebastian had once offered to buy the estate, several years earlier.  Perhaps Charles shouldn’t have been so convincing when he’d begged Sebastian not to; if the estate were in Shaw’s name, he doubts Erik would have brought him here.  
  
The grounds have been maintained adequately, despite the fact that the house has been uninhabited for years.  If there had been flowers at Sharon’s grave, they’ve been cleared away.  But it’s not his mother’s grave he’s looking at.  His father’s stands just next to hers.  Older, more worn.  But somehow more dignified.  
  
It takes longer than it ought, and Charles doesn’t know if the shredding in his chest is because of his failure to answer or because he has to blithely push past his lips, “Why should I ever wish to be separated from your company?”  
  
It’s perfect.  It’s the perfect answer, but Erik leaves, anyway.  Charles can all but feel him retreating from the family cemetery.  Where to, he can’t even begin to guess.  
  
It barely matters.  The result is the same: Charles is alone.  As deafening as the silence is, the hollow void inside of him is worse.  He tries to relate it to chaos theory, or to black holes, or anything that might explain how nothingness can have such a profound presence.  
  
All of it falls short.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he breathes.  He says it to his father’s marble slab because there’s no one else to hear it.  “I’m so sorry.”  
  
His hands catch on the top of the tombstone, thinking it will help him keep his balance, but his knees buckle.  Charles slumps down, blissfully alone, free from observation, his shoulder dragging down along the marker of his father’s grave.  As if further evidence was necessary.  As if Charles weren’t perfectly aware of his inability to look after anyone, let alone himself.  He should have been able to look after his mother, but he’d failed.  After his father had died, life had become a steady stream of should-haves.  
  
Where he is now is only the natural consequence of his own inadequacies.  A protest wells in his throat, but he’s quick to strangle it, not letting it endure for any longer than a moment.  Inadequate and defective.  Why else would he be sitting here, missing more the father he can barely remember than the mother who’d raised him?  
  
Trouble is, there’s no absolution when there’s no one left to hear confessions.  
  
  
  
  
At first, Erik had thought an hour seemed like a good time frame.  An hour, to say goodbye, to try to glean some sort of closure-- even as he reasons it out in his head, aimlessly walking the manicured lawns, it sounds paltry.  
  
Of course, he doesn’t even last forty-five minutes before he finds himself back at the gates of the Xavier family cemetery.  When he doesn’t immediately see Charles something very close to panic darts along his veins, but Erik finds him sitting on the ground, held up by his father’s tombstone-- tearstained and either asleep or unconscious.  
  
Quick arithmetic is all that’s needed to realise Charles had been five when his father had died.  Part of him hates that he even wonders if Charles remembers his father.  Wonders if he’d ever fallen asleep against a living, breathing father’s chest, rather than cold stone.  
  
Gently, Erik pulls Charles to his feet, bringing him back to the waking world in the process.  Charles comes willingly enough, but is just as silent as he’s been for the past four days.  
  
It seems genuine enough, when Charles curls against him in the backseat of the car as soon as they make their way back out onto the main road.  Toeing off his shoes, Charles eventually settles in with his head against Erik’s thigh, his puffy eyes sliding shut once more.  
  
Somehow the car turns into the elevator, and the elevator turns into Erik’s bedroom.  Maybe it shouldn’t surprise him.  Or, maybe it should worry him more, that Charles has barely said a word since Westchester, but somehow they’re on Erik’s bed.  Somehow, Charles is in his lap, rushing through unbuttoning his shirt, and none of it feels the least bit right.  
  
“Are you all right?” he breathes at the corner of Charles’s mouth, trying to catch a moment to think.  
  
But all he gets in responses is a guttural, vaguely affirmative sound.  
  
Pulling back a little, he tries to will Charles to look up at him.  “Charles, just talk to me.”  
  
Impatience tinging at the edges, Charles finally looks up to insist,  “I want you to touch me-- I want you to fuck me.”  
  
No.  It’s a line they haven’t crossed, and they aren’t going to.  Not now.  Not because of whatever addled, grief-driven emotional rollercoaster Charles is on.  Frustrated, he pushes a splayed hand against Charles’s chest, forcing a few more inches between them.    
  
“Fuck, Charles, just stop it.  You don’t have to this-- you don’t have to be this _act_.”  He doesn’t know how else to tell Charles that it’s all right, that he doesn’t have to perform.  That he can just _be_.  
  
Erik doesn’t know how Charles manages to retreat so artfully, how he manages to so quickly settle himself at the edge of the bed.  Even though enduring the silence is like letting a nerve hang, exposed, Erik keeps quiet, unwilling to budge.  
  
Eventually, Charles says quietly,  “You _hate_ what I am.”  His knuckles have gone white, holding to the edge of the mattress.  “Maybe because I was Shaw’s first-- as if that’s _my_ fault, as if that’s something I could have helped.”  
  
The scathing accusation that builds in Charles’s voice is too much to swallow whole.  It’s fine for Charles to be angry-- it’s natural.  He just doesn’t understand why Charles would want to direct that anger at him, why Charles would want to try to tie it to the bumps in the road they’ve already gotten past.    
  
“And what is it I’ve done now?  What perceived slight are you calling a punishment now?”  he presses, settling himself so that he’s seated just next to Charles.  
  
Charles says nothing.  He barely responds at all, except for the way he elects to glare viciously at the floor.  
  
“What have you needed that I’ve not given you?”  Erik tries.  No matter how much he wracks his brain, he can’t think of anything else to give Charles that wouldn’t somehow wind up communicating that he doesn’t want Charles in his home.  Even beyond the basics of food and shelter and all that--  Charles sleeps in his bed, Erik takes him to parties, Erik got him a _dog_ , for fuck’s sake.  
  
“You’ve made it abundantly clear that that’s nothing to do with me.”  The scant air between them seems to frost over.  “That everything you do for me, you’d have done for anyone.  I know that, you don’t have to keep repeating it.”  
  
Some central part of Erik’s patience snaps.  
  
He can't help the acid in the words when he says, “Oh, because the way _you_ act has anything to do with _me_?”  It doesn’t matter whether it’s him or Shaw, from all he can tell from Charles, and the hypocrisy of Charles trying to--  “You _can’t_ tell me you’d have behaved any differently with anyone else-- you can’t tell me that the way you think you feel about me has more to do with me than it does some fucking piece of fucking paper that _you_ think makes you mine.”  
  
Pain blooms sharp and hot across Erik’s cheek.  It’s hard to believe that had come from Charles’s hand - not just because it’s _Charles_ \- but because his head is ringing with the force of it.  A force he hadn’t expected Charles to possess.  Or, maybe it’s just shock that has Erik’s head ringing.  
  
Charles had slapped him.  
  
And for the first time in Erik’s memory, Charles walks away from him.  
  
  
  
  
Oh, god.  
  
The words repeat so quickly and so consistently in Charles’s head that they lose all meaning.  
  
But he keeps it looping, over and over, like a mantra, because otherwise he might let himself recognise what he’s actually done.  And he can’t.  He just can’t.    
  
The elevator’s chime somehow manages to penetrate the roar of his pulse in his ears.  He ignores Angel, and Logan, and Caesar, slipping into the elevator once they’re out of it, and punches the button for the roof.  He doesn’t look at any of them, doesn’t listen to whatever Angel’s frantically trying to say.  
  
Cold air stings at his lungs as he stumbles outside.  Worse than that, however, is the utterly bare swath of his neck.  He’s outside.  Without a collar.  
  
When his stomach lurches, Charles doesn’t have the capacity to keep down whatever’s in his stomach.  
  
  
  
  
Logan finds him on his knees, trying to get his dizziness under control.  Strong hands pull him to his feet and attempt to keep him steady.  Logan’s grip is sure enough that Charles is certain he couldn’t pull himself away if he tried.  The thought has Charles’s stomach turning again.  
  
Thankfully, Logan stays silent. He simply holds Charles somewhat upright until he spits out what has to be the last of the bile in his stomach.  
  
“Come on.”  Logan's tone leaves no room for discussion.  “Back inside.”  
  
While Logan doesn’t drag him back to the door, when Charles’s feet forget their purpose, Logan’s hand on his arm is enough to keep him moving forward.  The hold lingers as they descend the stairs inside.  As they ride the elevator back down.  Charles lets himself just focus on that, lets that consistent pressure keep at bay that hollowness that threatens to consume him once again.  
  
They’re standing in Charles’s room before he realises that he hasn’t seen Erik or Angel since getting back to the apartment.  
  
“You look like shit.  Shower.”  
  
Even though Logan releases him, to step into the bathroom and start the water running, the relief of having a clear instruction to follow borders on obscene.  Without a second thought, much less a word, Charles starts stripping off his clothes and follows.    
  
Once under the spray, it takes him a few minutes to realise that Logan’s still there, leaning against the bathroom wall.  Watching him.  
  
It doesn’t matter.    
  
It might be nice, if Charles could convince himself that maybe Logan was acting under Erik’s detailed instructions, but he doesn’t have the energy to manufacture that sort of delusion at the moment.  Awareness of an audience, however, makes it impossible for Charles to avoid smoothing out his movements, just a little.  It would take more effort to get himself to stop than anything else, so he doesn’t fight it.  
  
“Better,” Logan says, as he stands there, watching Charles towel his leg dry.  Maybe it’s supposed to be a question.  But he doesn’t seem to mind when Charles doesn’t respond.  
  
For one fleeting moment, he actually wonders if perhaps Logan’s going to take him to Erik.  If, maybe, Erik’s finally going to punish him--  or maybe, that’s why Logan’s here.  Maybe Erik has sent Logan to mete out punishment instead of doing it himself.  
  
Something like hope flares treacherously in Charles.  When the world around him comes back into focus, he’s staring at Logan’s hands.  Swallowing, Charles tries to keep his lips from parting and just barely succeeds.  It doesn’t matter that Logan looks like he’d be _good_ at it.  It shouldn’t matter.  
  
But they’re always telling him to ask for things.  He _hit_ Erik; lenient as Erik may be, it’s something for which Charles has to be punished.  He knows that.    
  
Maybe.  Maybe if he could just figure out how to ask Logan--  just so that he could finally relax, so that he could just stop thinking for more than a few minutes, so that he could just release the breath that’s been trapped in his lungs--  
  
“Time to go to sleep.”  Just that quickly, sense leaps back to the forefront of Charles’s mind.  There’s nothing to be done to hide the flicker of shame, for even considering asking someone other than Erik for discipline, that he knows shows on his face.  Both his regret, and its cause, must be painfully obvious, because Logan takes a step closer.  His voice is a little less rough around the edges when he says,  “Not tonight, kid.  It’s been a long day.  Everybody needs some sleep.  It’ll get dealt with tomorrow.”  
  
Tomorrow.  Thank fuck.  Knowing when means he doesn’t have to worry about wondering.  Knowing _when_ means that Charles doesn’t have to worry _now_ over what will happen, or who will do it.  It’s tomorrow’s problem.  
  
Now, all he has to do is sleep.    
  
“Thank you, Logan,”  he murmurs before Charles slips past him, heading for his bed.


	33. Chapter 33

“I dunno,”  Angel shrugs, not pulling her head out from the refrigerator.  “They left early, said they had some stuff to do.”  
  
Charles caves to the dangled bait.  “They?”  
  
“Yeah, Logan went with him.  Business stuff.”  
  
At least they’ve gotten to the point where they no longer have to tiptoe around the fact that Charles is being kept in the dark about what ‘business stuff’ entails.  
  
After the previous night, Charles isn’t sure if he finds Erik’s household just as foreign as ever, or if it’s managed to start feeling like his home.  It seems like a strange thought, when only yesterday he’d half-expected never to see it again.  
  
“I see.”  
  
Angel emerges, at last, with a full pitcher of lemonade and a vague look of defeat;  it seems someone else drank the last of whatever fruit juice blend she’d wanted.  She holds the lemonade out in his direction, giving the pitcher what appears to be an ill-advised wiggle.  Charles shakes his head at the offer.  
  
“So, I’ve been thinking,”  sometimes a dangerous pastime, when it comes to Angel,  “we’ve got that roof up there.”  Any doubts Charles might have been nursing about whether or not Angel knows exactly what had gone on last night are immediately laid to rest.  “But it’s not like we really ever use it for anything.  Don’t people put things on roofs?”  
  
“You mean, like a pool?”  Charles guesses.  It seems like a ridiculous time of year to be thinking about an outdoor pool, but then he supposes that one would want the construction done before the weather became game enough to make use of it.  
  
“Or a garden.  Like, our own tiny little park, or something.”  It's almost convincingly casual as she pours herself a glass of what's sure to be a syrupy-sweet version of lemonade.  "Someplace Caesar could romp around."  
  
Actually, that sounds kind of nice.  
  
  
  
  
 _Use a belt,_ Logan had said. _Use your hand, and all it’ll take is one little flinch, and you’ll convince yourself it’s **you** he’s scared of._  
  
Erik waits, sitting on the foot of his bed, hands braced atop his knees.  Better, he thinks, to do this here, in his room, rather than Charles’s.  Even if Charles doesn’t like sleeping alone, Erik wants Charles to have someplace in the house where he can go to be alone when he needs it, and Erik wants that place to feel safe.  
  
It had taken Logan the better part of three hours, and resorting to enlisting Azazel’s assistance over the phone, to convince Erik that this isn’t an awful idea.  That this will help Charles feel better.  
  
He still not completely sold on it, but he’s trying to come to terms with the fact that his expectations of Charles’s wants and needs fail to line up with the reality. Moreover, Angel has yet to say a word about any of it.  And if Angel’s feeling that out of her depth, to keep carrying on as though he knows what he’s doing would be nothing short of idiotic.  
  
She had simply nodded, when he’d told her to go get Charles, to send him to Erik’s room.  
  
Charles comes in, already in his pyjamas, looking too composed for him to not be a hurricane of nerves an unease on the inside.  He likes to think he'd have been able to tell as much, even without Logan spelling out the shape in which he'd found Charles the night before.  Part of him wants to regret having put this off for so much of the day, but at the same time, he’s sure that trying to do this before he was ready would only make things worse in the end.  
  
“Charles,” he says, not even bothering to try for a conversational tone.  
  
“Erik."  It wavers with what Erik thinks is apprehension.  
  
“Would kneeling make you feel more comfortable?”  
  
For a moment, Charles does nothing.  Then he blinks.  And then he nods.  So Erik nods back.  With Charles looking just a little more relaxed, on his knees at Erik’s feet, he has to grudgingly suppose that Azazel’s suggestions might not be entirely worthless.  
  
“I upset you last night.”  
  
Charles’s eyes hit the floor.  “That’s no excuse.”  
  
In Shaw’s house, it probably wouldn’t be.  But they’re not here because of Shaw's rules, or how Erik feels.  
  
“You hit me.  And I don’t care,”  Erik says firmly.  He wants to bring up Logan’s first week at the apartment.  Wants to talk about equity and equality, but they’re not here for that, either.  Ignoring the way Charles has gone more pale than usual, Erik asks,  “What do you think should happen now?”  
  
“I should be punished,”  Charles says without hesitation.    
  
It conjures no surprise on Erik’s part, but for the first time in his life, that lack of surprise is coupled with a sense of responsibility.  “Do you _want_ to be punished?”  
  
Slowly, Charles’s gaze drags itself upwards.  For a moment, he breathes shallowly through the small part in the seam of his lips.  He licks them before he admits,  “I need it.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Closure,”  Charles answers, just as quickly.  “Catharsis.  I just... I just need it.”  
  
There’s something shamelessly open to Charles, just now, that makes _Erik_ feel self-conscious.  “I don’t want to hurt you,”  he says, uninterested in following the rest of the script he’s plotted out in his head if he can’t get that much across, at least.  
  
And Charles - batshit crazy Charles - just smiles at him.  “You don’t want to abuse me.  You don’t want to break me.  And I know you won’t do either.”  
  
“If you need me to stop, will you say so?”  
  
“If you like.”  It’s almost too earnest.  
  
“I do,”  Erik says, watching Charles’s gaze track his hands as they move to unbuckle his belt.  His wishes Charles’s attention wasn’t quite so rapt.  
  
Once Erik’s belt is free from the loops of his trousers, Charles glances back up.  “I trust you.”  
  
  
He wishes the belt didn’t leave such stark red stripes along the swell of Charles’s arse.  Or, he wishes they didn't turn red.  They don't _start_ red; at first, the imprint of the belt is a blinding white against Charles's skin, before it gives way to a sordid flush.  Even though he’d worked Charles’s skin up a bit - because according to Logan, that’s the way to do it properly - now that he’s putting a bit of force behind each swing, each crack of leather is followed by a redding lash across Charles’s skin-- and some dizzying mix of a whimper and a groan.  
  
Erik has no idea which of them is more fucked up:  Charles, naked and kneeling on Erik’s bed, hands fisting at the blanket, his leaking cock jumping every time Erik’s belt makes contact, or himself, achingly hard in his own trousers, over _this_.  
  
It’s just that he hadn’t expected Charles to react like this.  He’d braced himself for tears, for blubbering apologies, for Charles falling to pieces.  Not for soft gasps that escalate with each crack of his belt.  Not for the way the backs of Charles’s thighs and arse tense up after each blow, and not for the way Charles rocks his hips back to offer himself up again in the next instant.  
  
 _I trust you._  
  
Erik is fairly certain they’ve made it to twenty... lashes?  He hasn’t made Charles count and he hasn’t exactly been able to keep track.  Either way, what it is supposed to matter to Charles?  Doesn’t Charles want him to do whatever he wants?  
  
Maybe it’s just easier, for both of them, for Erik to trace his fingertips along the most recent stripe imparted to Charles’s arse.  The way Charles’s breath shudders at the contact sends the rest of the blood in his body, and the rest of his sense, plummeting down towards his groin.  Erik trades a feathery touch for a firmer grip, palming Charles’s arse.  
  
And Charles _moans_.  Erik can’t remember why he ought not be doing this.  Why he should stop it here.  
  
“You like this, Charles?”  He doesn’t care how rough his voice sounds.  
  
Although Charles nods, almost frantically, all he can say is,  “God-- fuck.”  
  
“ _My_ name,”  Erik growls, having no idea where it came from.  
  
“ _Erik_ \--”  like it’s the only word he knows.  
  
Erik drops the belt.  It lands on the floor only an instant before his knees.  One hand on each side, Erik lets his grip dig in a bit as he spreads Charles’s cheeks.  Charles goes utterly still, apart from the ragged breathing, just before dragging the soft flat of his tongue across Charles’s puckered hole.  
  
Charles chokes out a startled sound, and Erik keeps going, teasing around his entrance until Charles starts to fucking _whimper_.  Erik’s hands clench and Charles trembles as Erik’s tongue delves into him.  Losing himself in Charles’s every shift and nearly-restrained buck, Erik keeps at it, pushing in deeper and spreading Charles’s cheeks a bit wider, until all Charles can say is his name.  
  
And the occasional, taut, “ _Please_ \--”  
  
Charles’s arm buckle, sending his face into the bed, but neither of them seem to care.  All Charles does is thrust his hips back, forcing himself a little harder into Erik’s grasp as he rasps,  “Erik, please can-- can I--  please, can I come?”  
  
Erik’s fingertips dig into Charles’s flesh.  Charles has never _asked_ before.  “Do it,”  he demands,  “I want you to come.”  
  
Charles’s back bows and he clenches down around Erik’s tongue.  Not to be ejected, Erik pushes in deeper, and Charles comes with a low groan.  Erik doesn’t know if Charles managed to get a hand around his cock or if Charles had actually just come from nothing more than the instruction and Erik’s tongue.  
  
With one hand on the small of Charles’s back for balance, Erik finds himself on his feet, yanking his trousers open and fisting his own cock.  It’s too fast and too rough and even his own precome isn’t quite enough to pass for lubricant, but he can’t stop or he’s going to do something fucking insane-- like fuck Charles.  And, _fuck_ , but he wants to.   The thought of it, of driving himself into Charles, of Charles’s belt-stung arse hot against his thighs, is what has Erik painting Charles’s backside with streaks of come.  
  
For a little while, all Erik can do is stare at the wreck he’s made of Charles.  He’d--  well, he’d planned on giving Charles some sort of reward after the whole punishment part, but he’d been planning on.... not that.  Of course, the plan of comforting Charles and holding him and whatnot had been contingent on Charles being a crying mess.  
  
While it’s clear that tears have made their way down Charles’s face, and he _is_ something of a mess, it’s not... it’s not what Erik had been expecting.  
  
“Are you all right?”  Surely, it can’t hurt to ask.  
  
Clearly-insane-Charles chuckles.  He doesn’t really move, except to turn the side of his face against the bed to that he can look over his shoulder at Erik.  “I could probably use a towel.”  
  
Ah.  Right.  
  
Ah, fuck.  
  
  
  
  
The first thing Charles notices when he wakes up is that Erik is already awake.  The second, the waves of unease radiating off of Erik.  So, despite his desire to tuck in closer against Erik, Charles stays as he is, comfortably curled against Erik’s side.  
  
“You could avoid me for a few days,”  he suggests.  It’s not hard to guess at what has Erik so tightly wound.  “And I can act as though nothing happened last night.”  And Charles is good at it, he can make Erik believe it.  “This doesn’t have to be--”  
  
“Charles.”  There’s a vague disbelief under the syllables.  “Are you trying to make me feel better?”  
  
He’s quick to say, “I just want you to know that it’s all right.  That I understand.”  If Erik needs a bit of space, to soothe his conscience, or whatever it is he needs, Charles can accept that it’s because that’s what Erik needs, not because of something _he’s_ done.  
  
“But you don’t,”  Erik says, almost sadly.  
  
Wanting nothing more than to change Erik’s tone, Charles insists,  “I understand _that_ you feel guilty, that you think you’ve done something wrong.  I don’t need to know _why_ , I already know that it’s absurd.”  
  
Erik sighs, but he patiently says, “What’s absurd is thinking that doing something that _might_ upset me means you deserve--”  
  
“I know you didn’t want to punish me.”  Charles takes a bracing breath before he says, “I just don’t want you to resent it, or me-- I don’t want you taking care of me to be a burden.”  
  
Even after the words are out of his mouth, he plays them over again in his mind.  They don’t sound... all that demanding.  He hopes.  
  
  
“I want to take care of you.”  It’s surprising, how easy the words are to say.  But, with someone like Charles, he’d have to be heartless to not want to help.  “What I regret about last night was letting my own...”  
  
“When you came on my back.”  Exactly how Charles can be more blunt than Logan, of all people, is a fucking mystery.  
  
“Yes.  That.”  Before Charles can look too crestfallen, “Not because I don’t want you.  Not because you aren’t gorgeous, or because you’re not worth wanting, but because I don’t know if you really want _me_.”  
  
With far too much optimism, Charles asks, “Would it help if I begged?”  
  
“ _Charles_ ,”  he practically coughs out, worried that Charles might actually just... start in with the begging.  Quickly, he clears his throat.  “How do you even know this is what you want?  That it’s not more than just brainwashing or ‘training’?”    
  
He’s been trained to want his master, taught that his sole purpose is giving his master pleasure, and that failing to do so makes him worthless.  If Erik can’t ignore that anymore, he doesn’t see why Charles should be allowed to.  
  
Charles doesn’t argue.  Not exactly.  “What does it matter?  It doesn’t make the feeling of wanting your touch any less real to me.  It offers me no comfort, when you refuse to so much as look at me for days.”  Charles huffs out a breath.  “To be punished for my bad behaviour, it makes sense to me.  To be punished for being what I am, or being what other people made me... it only makes me want to hate myself.”  
  
It's among the more fucked up things Erik has ever heard in his life, but at least it sheds a little light to the way Charles sees things.  Nevertheless, even though he knows it isn't what Charles wants to hear, he can't help saying,  “You’re more than just a Pet, Charles.”  
  
“Of course I am;  I’m _your_ Pet.”  Before Erik can sigh again, Charles says,  “It’s just that you think that means something worthless.  Something to be abused and exploited.  That’s not what you’re supposed to do with a Pet.”  
  
Fine.  He'll bite.  “What _are_ you supposed to do?”  
  
“Love them.”  
  
Maybe Charles hadn’t been joking, the other night over chess.  The thought comes too suddenly for him to have the chance to filter:  “Do you think you love me?”  
  
“I wish I could say yes-- but I can’t. You’d pull yourself away from me.  You’d feel like you were taking advantage, you’d feel guilty over the fact that wouldn’t return those feelings.”  Charles tilts his head, wearing a serene smile that borders on unsettling.  “I would, though, if I thought you’d let me.  There’s quite a lot to you worth loving, Erik.”  
  
What makes Erik feel guilty is that it sounds like something he should be saying to Charles, rather than the other way ‘round.


	34. Chapter 34

“I think there’s something wrong with Erik,”  Charles says, for the second time, trying to get Angel to pull her head out of her Sudoku book.  
  
Her mouth is half-open to start in on the laundry list of things that are wrong with Erik when she catches Charles’s genuine concern.  “What’d he do?”  
  
Charles has no idea what she dreadful notion she's gotten into her head, but he thinks he might have oversold his worry.  Quickly, and more calmly, he adds,  “He’s sleeping in.”  
  
Angel frowns, hardly looking mollified.  “Does he have a fever?”  
  
“It’s impossible to tell--  even when he’s perfectly healthy, it’s like sleeping next to a nuclear reactor.”  
  
Despite the pink creeping up Charles’s neck, Angel somehow manages to keep her lips closed tight over whatever jibe she has on the tip of her tongue.  For his own part, Charles doesn’t bother hiding his relief.  
  
“There’s a thermometer in the drawer next to the sink, I think,”  she says instead, graciously carrying on.  
  
“You want me to take his temperature?” he asks, when she shows no sign of getting up off the couch.  It’s not that he has a problem with the idea, it’s just that there are rarely straight lines that indicate what part of caring for Erik falls under Angel’s purview and what falls under his own.  
  
“Are you kidding?  All those teeth?”  she scoffs, flipping her pencil to scrub away with her eraser.  “Wouldn’t put my hands anywhere near that mouth.”  
  
Charles is spectacularly grateful that her attention is so devoted to the book that she misses the way his blush escalates.  What’s worse is that once he starts to blush a little, apparently, he carries on blushing quite a lot, out of embarrassment over blushing in the first place.  This never used to be a problem.  
  
Making a quick escape to the kitchen with Caesar in tow, he blames his overactive circulatory system on the recent bouts of emotional upheaval.  
  
It’s been a week since Westchester.  
  
Waking up in Erik’s bed the next morning, Charles had found himself more aware of his surroundings than he had been in days, found himself rousing from the numb weightlessness that had saturated him only the morning before.  And it isn’t so much that he feels _heavy_ now--  just grounded.  
  
He hasn’t broached the topic of sex again, and neither has Erik.  It’s more fear of rejection than lack of desire at this point.  Well.  It’s easier to think of it as ‘fear of rejection.’  But it’s not the echo of Erik telling him to stop that’s been gliding beneath the surface of Charles's thoughts.  
  
 _You **can’t** tell me you’d have behaved any differently with anyone else-- you can’t tell me that the way you think you feel about me has more to do with me than it does some fucking piece of fucking paper that **you** think makes you mine._  
  
Angel’s right; sometimes, Erik can be an idiot.  But then again, so can Charles.  Erik's words lost their sting the instant he saw the outline of his hand flush against Erik’s cheek, the barb of them lost under a crash of regret.  If Erik truly cared nothing for him, Erik never would have punished him.  Even though Charles doubts Erik would have sold him, when Erik had left early in the morning, he hadn’t been able to dismiss the fear that Erik might ignore him for weeks.  
  
And Erik hadn’t even been upset.  He’d just wanted to get past it-- and he’d gotten them _both_ past it.  
  
It’s a weight off his shoulders that he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying, to be able to hope, if not maybe even believe a little, that if he were to actually upset Erik, it wouldn’t be unforgiveable.  That it wouldn’t mean being pushed away or sold off.  
  
He still doesn’t want to upset Erik, of course;  but more than that, he wants to make Erik happy.  Maybe Erik simply interested in penetrative sex.  The thought is somewhat disheartening, but Charles can put aside his own interests for Erik’s sake.  
  
Well, once Erik is better anyway.  If Erik actually is sick, Charles gets the feeling he’s not going to be happy with anything.  And that much, at least, Charles doesn’t feel inclined to take personally.  
  
  
  
“Erik, it’s just a thermometer,”  Charles says, quite patiently.  
  
Whatever garbled mess of syllables Erik attempts to growl out in response rings with disapproval.  If it weren’t so ridiculously endearing, Charles would have rolled his eyes.  
  
“Come on, you’re upsetting Caesar.”  Charles even manages to keep a straight face as he says it.    
  
From where Caesar, who appears to be just fine, sits on the floor, he gives a little yip at the sound of his own name.  Thankfully, the absurdity of it all has the desired effect:  Erik drags his head out from under his pillow, just to make sure he hadn’t imagined that.  
  
Just that quickly, Charles hooks a finger against the backs of Erik’s teeth, pulling his open a bit wider.  “Oh don’t give me that look-- if you insist on acting like a child, I will most certainly treat you like one,”  he says easily, slipping the thermometer under Erik’s tongue and extracting his finger.  “It only takes a few seconds, and once I’m sure you’re brain isn’t about to boil, I’ll be able to tell Angel that she doesn’t need to call for a doctor.”  
  
Although Angel hadn’t threatened to, it seems an effective way to leverage Erik’s aversion to medical attention into compliance.  
  
Indifferent to Erik’s pointed glaring, the thermometer obligingly beeps just a few moments later.  Charles plucks it from between Erik’s lips before Erik can reach for it himself.  
  
“Not catastrophic, but you _do_ have a fever,”  Charles murmurs, almost to himself.  
  
With a bit of a huff that seems to imply Erik thinks he’s won some sort of victory, he retreats back under his pillow.  Charles chuckles to himself as he caps the thermometer, making a mental note to clean both it and his hands before he heads back downstairs.  
  
“I’m going to bring you up something to drink--  you’ll only make yourself more miserable if you get dehydrated.”


	35. Chapter 35

“He’s going to get himself sick,”  Erik grumbles, tearing open his popsicle.  He doesn't really like popsicles, but the cold is nice.  
  
“Then why are you letting him sleep in here?”  Angel doesn’t even bother to hide her smirk as she mutes the television.    
  
Charles has brought up every James Bond movie ever made, and Erik is doing his best not to find that--  he’s trying not to find that _anything_ , least of all endearing.  
  
“I tell him not to, he just doesn’t listen.”  Had anyone told him, two weeks ago, that he’d be saying such a thing about Charles, he’d have laughed in their faces.  But for the ast couple of days, every concern he's raised, Charles has had an easy answer for, and Erik hasn't had the energy to argue.  “He says it’s the flu.  Apparently sleeping next to me isn’t a problem.”  
  
It’s paraphrasing, but talking is exhausting.  Charles goes on and on about germs and transmission and if Angel's really all that curious, she can as him herself.  
  
“Isn’t that a good thing?”  she asks, all smarmy and obnoxious.  “Him asserting himself and stuff?”  
  
It’s.  Well.  Charles dismisses his concerns so casually that Erik’s left to wonder if maybe Charles just really wants to be here.  With him.  It shouldn’t be surprising; he knows Charles doesn’t like to sleep alone.  But he’s given Charles every reason to go back to his own room, and Charles is happy to ignore every last one.  
  
It shouldn’t be surprising.  And he shouldn’t read that much into it.  
  
“Oh, and I postponed your meeting with Azazel,”  Angel mentions.  
  
Fucking hell.  He's never getting sick again.  
  
  
  
  
After tasting the broth for maybe the twelfth time, Charles insists,  “Angel, like I said before--”  
  
“Have you ever even had matzo ball soup before?”  she pouts, shuffling back over to the stove.  
  
Charles does his best not to sigh from where he sits on the kitchen floor, trying to teach Caesar to roll over on command.  “No, but I am perfectly capable of telling whether or not something tastes awful.  Besides--”  
  
“See, this is what you don’t get,” she huffs.  “It’s not about whether or not it tastes _good_ , it’s about whether or not it tastes _right_.”  
  
Her flustered air, however, quickly dissipates, giving way to something almost like guilt.  The glance she steals over her shoulder makes it seem as though she thinks she’s said something she shouldn’t have.  Charles, however, can’t imagine what on earth it would be, so he writes it off to Angel’s general, low-level insanity.  
  
As far as Charles is concerned, the ranking of the Lehnsherr household sanity, in ascending order, goes:  Erik, Angel, Logan, Caesar, and then himself.  Sometimes Logan’s sanity trumps Caesars, but not often enough for Charles to reorder the sequence.  
  
“You do realise that he can’t taste the difference between orange juice and tea, don’t you?”  he asks, if only to nudge her back towards the point.  
  
There’s a moment, when he looks at her and she looks at him, and there’s a moment of indecision.  And then Erik’s phone, which Angel has been forced to babysit, starts chirping from the countertop.  Angel musters a groan and a dramatic roll of her eyes follows easily as she scoops up the mobile.  
  
From the sound of it, it’s someone from the office.  Apparently, Erik taking a long weekend is fine, but if he misses more than two days of work, it’s the absolute end of the world; it’s not even noon and Erik’s phone has gone off no less than six times.  
  
Charles doubts Angel has any formal training in engineering, but the combination of her attitude and what she’s gleaned from Erik over the years make her a force for Erik’s subordinates to reckon with.  She seems mildly furious, but Charles smiles as he watches her snap at the phone.  
  
She’s good for Erik.  
  
Even if she is inexplicably analretentive about soup.  
  
When, a moment later, the house phone rings, Charles doesn’t make a move to deal with it; no one’s calling to talk to him.  At best, he’d just take a message, and that’s what the answering machine is for.  Angel glances at the phone charger, and then snatches up the cordless phone, though she doesn’t bother answering it-- she just shoves it in Charles’s direction.  
  
He just blinks.  Once she starts shaking the phone aggressively, he supposes there’s nothing for it.  
  
“Hello, Lehnsherr residence,”  he says, assuming his job is to tell whoever-it-is that Angel will be available in a moment.  
  
There’s nothing but silence, and Charles has to wonder if perhaps the call hasn’t dropped.  
  
“Well, you must be Charles!”  Whoever she is, she sounds far too delighted.  “This is Edie, Erik’s mother.”  
  
Oh.  Oh, god.  
  
“I hear he’s not feeling well--  my sympathies there, he can be such an insufferable grump when he’s sick.”  
  
Charles can’t seem to get his tongue to work.


	36. Chapter 36

When the 007 theme song kicks on and the credits start to roll, Charles climbs off the bed to brush his teeth-- but not without first doling out a small cluster of tablets and pills for Erik to take.  Protesting, he’s come to find, is pointless, so he swallows them down with a bit of water, his too-warm eyelids already heavy and dropping.  
  
“Your mother seems nice,”  Charles says, turning off the television as he passes it.  
  
Despite the exhaustion that hangs on Erik’s limbs, he forces himself to sit up.  “What?”  Or at least, he tries to sit up.  
  
He can hear Charles chuckling, just before the cool reeds of his fingers cover Erik's mouth-- just before pale skin and dark hair usurp his entire field of vision.  It’s how Charles kisses him when he’s sick, apparently: with those fingers as a buffer between their lips.  
  
In spite of himself, Erik abandons the effort of trying to sit up.  There’s no point to it, when Charles is already crawling into bed.  
  
“You talked to my mother?”  Must have been on the phone, but Charles never bothers with the phone.  
  
“Only for a few moments.”  It sounds so normal.  Really, that’s what’s wrong with all this-- how _normal_ Charles seems.  After... everything.  
  
Part of him had wanted Logan to be wrong.  Had wanted Charles to recoil from him because, at least, it would have simplified things.  It would have given him the liberty to feel guilty; as it is, all he feels guilty about is the fact that he _doesn’t_ feel guilty about essentially beating Charles.  And no matter how much he wants to just dismiss Charles’s appreciation - for lack of a better word - Charles’s other words keep cropping up in his head.  
  
 _What does it matter?  It doesn’t make the feeling of wanting your touch any less real to me._  
  
Is Charles’s ability to derive physical pleasure from discipline less valid than someone else’s?  Someone who isn’t a Pet?  
  
Ugh, he’s too sick for this.  
  
“Well, I think it was a few moments,” Charles amends as he reaches over to make sure the alarm won’t be going off at six in the morning.  Really, his inability to accurately estimate the passage of time without a watch borders on ridiculous.  Ten minutes, two hours-- apparently it’s all the same to Charles.  “She called to talk to Angel, to ‘fix’ the soup, and Angel was on the other phone.”  
  
Charles cannot possibly want to discuss his mother.  Not when his own mother so recently--  Charles probably just doesn’t want him to hear Angel mention something about it and then think Charles had been trying to hide something.    
  
“Did you try it?”  
  
“Pardon?” he asks, setting down the alarm.  Somehow, it’s migrated over to Charles’s side of the bed.  And somehow, that’s stranger than the fact that Charles has a side-of-the-bed in Erik’s bed.  
  
“The soup.”  
  
Settling down under the covers, Charles says nothing for a moment.  
  
“It’s very good, Erik.”  The words are warm, but far too soft.  
  
Erik doesn’t really know how his hand finds Charles’s.  The _how_ of it doesn’t have to matter, he hopes.  
  
“How are you doing with things?”  Fuck, but he’s tired.  He likes to think he’d be better at this, if it weren’t for the way he feels as though he’s been hit by a bus.  “Your mother...”  
  
“We weren’t close.”  
  
He can feel his own features twisting with a disgruntled confusion.  
  
Charles’s chuckle is too warm a thing, for what they’re talking about.  “It was a big house.  Given enough rooms, no one has to be close to anyone.”  
  
“How could anyone sell you?”  he hears his mouth ask, despite the way his brain is screaming at him to shut up.  Erik very nearly tries to rephrase, thinking that it might sound too suggestive, but he’s sure he’d do more harm than good with any attempt to revise the question.  
  
Charles’s smile doesn’t entirely shine through the shadow at its heels.  “Some people might consider that a rude question,”  Charles says quietly.  
  
Erik couldn’t care less what people think is rude, but there’s no mistaking that Charles is attempting to dodge the topic.  It’s not as though Erik could blame him.  Maybe it is rude--  or at least, he can understand the construct.  As far as he’s concerned, the question is only harsh to the idiots who made the choice to sell Charles in the first place.  
  
Then again, he supposes he could see how, to someone like Charles, the question could sound like, ‘ _So, why’d your parents choose to sell you off when they clearly didn’t have to?_ ’  
  
Erik tells himself that it’s better for his sanity if he doesn’t know.  Probably.  Maybe.  However uncertain of that he might be, he has no desire to make Charles talk about something he doesn’t want to discuss.  
  
“You can just tell me to shut up.  Angel does it all the time.”    
  
A flicker of a proper smile tugs at Charles’s lips.  Instead of speaking, however, he leans back over to the bedside table and clicks off the light.  Not more than a moment later, Charles is disregarding his own carefully constructed Rules for the Sick, and moves to curl up right against Erik’s side, using Erik’s shoulder for a pillow.  
  
It doesn’t matter how Charles’s soft hair feels against his bare skin.  Reluctantly, he makes himself say, “Charles, I really don’t want to get you sick.”  He forgives his arms for contributing nothing to the argument;  they feel like lead and in the dark, he’d probably accidentally smack Charles on the nose or something.  
  
He can feel Charles smile against his skin.    
  
“Erik, do shut up.”  
  
  
  
  
“But why _not_ do an Arabian theme?”  Angel pouts, just to be sulky.  “It’s ours, we can do whatever we want with it.”  She squeaks a toy at Caesar, attracting his ardent focus before tossing it to the other side of the living room.  As he goes tearing after it, she adds,  “Caesar would probably like it.”  
  
“Ignoring entirely the fact that Arabian gardens do not actually contain sand-- do you really think Caesar would like having his coat full of sand?”  Charles smirks.  It’s a lovely notion, in theory, but hardly reasonable, given their climate.  “Ignoring entirely the fact that he would turn a sand-garden into a giant litter box, what would happen when it rained?”  
  
Angel makes reluctantly contemplative sound.  Quite clearly, she’d not thought of either trouble.  Sure, sand and veil-lined tents for lounging sound charming, but it’s a bit impractical.  
  
“Well, I’m sold,”  she announces with a worrying degree of finality, quite literally throwing up her hands.  
  
“Sold on what?”  he asks, wary as she stands up and starts stacking her notebooks and magazines on home gardening.  
  
“Clearly, you’re better suited to this whole mess,”  she says, quite literally dumping the lot of it in his lap.  
  
He narrows his eyes at her, which she almost misses as she turns back to Caesar, who has returned, eager for her to throw the toy again.  Charles can’t help suspecting that, for all her nonchalance, this has been her design all along, to pass this project off to him.  It’s not that he minds, exactly, but somehow, the notion still chafes.  
  
Angel says nothing, just crouches down to play a bit of tug with Caesar.  When she speaks, she doesn’t bother looking up, but she doesn’t waste her time playing casual, either.  “Come on, Char.”  It’s an abbreviation he much prefers to _Chuck_.  “Erik’s more-or-less better.  Tomorrow he’ll be back at work.  You really want to sit around all day thinking about your dead mom?”  
  
It’s a bluntness Charles has to appreciate;  he’d much rather blunt words than kid gloves.  So Charles catches her eye and doesn’t bother with pretense.  
  
“Thank you,”  he says simply, grateful for both the distraction and her demeanour, his fingertips idly toying with the edge of the topmost magazine of the stack.  
  
“Consider it an early birthday present,” she dismisses, the words made tight by her struggle to wrest the toy from Caesar’s teeth.  
  
“That’s not for months,”  Charles scoffs, even if he’s smiling.  A present, after all, isn’t charity.  It’s not given out of pity.  
  
“Well where on earth do you think we’re going to have your birthday party?”  she laughs.  Caesar manages to best her, and trots off towards the kitchen with his prize in his teeth, to gloat, no doubt.  “So bear that in mind:  we need a garden capable of hosting a garden party.”  
  
“You really do read far too much into my accent.”  
  
Angel laughs again, more lightly this time.  
  
“There are to be, under no circumstances, cucumber sandwiches,”  he insists.  “They’re dreadful.”  
  
  
  
  
“Thank you,”  Charles says, the words forming clouds as they leave his lips.  
  
“For what?”  
  
Logan’s gruff words pull a smile across his mouth.  Surely, between Pets, there’s no need to play dumb.  
  
“The belt was a nice touch,”  he says mildly, whilst Caesar sniffs around at the frost-covered grass.  
  
For a long while, Logan is silent, and Charles lets it stand.  That Logan doesn’t answer is answer enough; he doesn’t need Logan to accept his gratitude for it to be valid, nonetheless.  
  
Parents walk their children to school through the park.  Joggers make their rounds.  Bicycle-bound city police complete their circuits.  
  
“You know why he’s scared of hurting you, don’t you?”  Logan doesn’t wait for Charles’s answer, which is just as well, because Charles doesn’t have one.  “He doesn’t understand how you don’t hate Shaw, and he doesn’t want to give you a reason to him.”  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,”  Charles groan, rolling his eyes.  
  
Logan barks out a laugh.  It’s almost worth it.


	37. Chapter 37

To Erik’s credit, he doesn’t even flinch when he hears the roof door kick open behind him.  He just keeps his eyes on the skyline, watching the peachy-red of the evening sky cling to resistance against the advancing gray clouds.  
  
Sure, it helps that Logan’s the only one who would essentially kick a door open, but Erik doesn’t bother lingering on that.  Instead, he shoves his hands a little further into the pockets of his coat, and most decidedly does not appreciate the fact that he has on a bathrobe underneath it.  With the sun no longer visible on the horizon, it's getting colder.  
  
“You seriously hiding from your nanny?”  Logan sounds downright amused, which is surely some sign that the apocalypse is swiftly approaching.  
  
“I swear, he’s worse than my mother,”  Erik mutters.  
  
Around the cigarette Logan's trying to light, he smriks,  “You know not to let Angel hear you say that, right?”  
  
The only one Angel wants to hear acknowledged as ‘worse than his mother’ is her.  And she is, in a lot of ways, but Charles-- Charles has him taking multivitamins and drinking tea without him even realising that he ought to put up some sort of fight.  
  
He must have been sicker than he’d realised.  
  
Feeling well enough to roll his eyes, Erik does just that while Logan lights up a cigarette.  After a few moments of comfortable silence, Erik gives in to the appeal of breaking a rule, and pilfers the cigarette from Logan’s fingers.  
  
“You’re not worried he’s going to put you in a time-out if he catches you smoking?”  is all Logan says.  
  
“What makes you think he cares?”  comes Charles’s voice from behind the both of them.  
  
There’s something satisfying in seeing Logan look a little nervous.  How the hell Charles, of all people - with his Oxford shirt and argyle sweatervest - makes Logan nervous, Erik doesn’t even guess at.  
  
As Charles and Logan go through their rounds of Charles commenting on and asking after Logan’s recovery, and Logan prodding at Charles to watch some WWII documentary, Erik turns his gaze to the skyline and enjoys his fucking cigarette.  He rarely ever bothers to smoke, but when he does, he likes to think he makes the most of it.  
  
What he doesn’t expect to see out of the corner of his eye is a cigarette perched between Charles’s lips-- much less to see Logan lighting it for him.  
  
“Heading down to the gym, boss,”  Logan says with a mock salute in Erik's direction.  
  
“See you for dinner?”  Charles smiles as he passes.  
  
Logan just snorts a laugh on his way back towards the door.  
  
They stand next to each other quietly for a while, and Erik's glad for the company.  He'd escaped to the roof mostly because spending a week trapped in his own apartment makes him go a bit stir-crazy, not actually to get away from Charles.  Nevertheless, he keeps waiting for Charles to say something.  To tell him to go back inside, or that smoking will give him pneumonia-- though that, he supposes, might be a bit hypocritical at the moment.  
  
“Didn’t know you smoke,”  he says.  Only after the words are out does he it occur to him that Charles actually might.  Maybe Shaw had let him.  Or made him.  And maybe, all the while, Charles has been going through bouts of nicotine withdrawl or something, and he'd just never thought to ask if--  
  
“When it’s offered,”  Charles shrugs.  
  
Deja-vu resonates through Erik, awash with the memory of offering Charles a drink.  
  
“ _Because_ it’s offered?” he asks before he can think better of it.  Surely, it’s not worth wondering over whether or not there’s something he might ask for that Charles would deny him.  
  
And Charles just chuckles, flicking a way a bit of ash in a way that looks too practiced to be by mistake.  “Not something I’d recommend making a habit of, but from time to time, I can see the appeal.”  
  
“From time to time,” he repeats, his thoughts winding back down to a steady hum.  “Where do you even _get_ cigarettes?”  
  
Charles’s smile, however small, brightens up the dusk.  “Your doorman.”  
  
Erik has to laugh, and even when he stops, they’re still smiling at each other.  At first, he'd been concerned about how fond the evening doorman seems of Charles-- and then, one their way out to walk Caesar one evening, he'd met the doorman's ten-year-old daughter, to whom Charles is unsurprisingly very kind.  Also, it turns out that Charles has a penchant for giving the doorman and his family at least half the batch, whenever Angel makes oatmeal cookies.  
  
After another drag, Erik grins, “You’re not going to scold me, or something?”  
  
“Well, you’re a big boy,”  Charles concedes, the curl of his lips turning positively sinful.  “And I suppose you’re well enough now that you don’t really need a minder anymore.”  
  
There’s something wrong with Erik - there’s a lot that’s wrong with Erik - but it’s made worse by the fact that he finds himself trying to count the days since he’s had his mouth on Charles’s skin.  
  
Watching Charles smoke doesn't provide a helpful distraction.  It turns out, Charles closes his lips around a cigarette, rather than pursing them;  it makes it worse.  It makes his lips look just as full, and it makes his cheeks look practically pink--  
  
Or maybe that’s the cold, and the fact that Charles doens't even have a coat on.  
  
“How are you not freezing?”  he demands, wrecking the quiet warmth of the moment.  
  
Charles’s laugh, however, seems to knit it back together a little-- it's either that laugh, or the way Charles insinuates himself into Erik’s personal space, slipping his free arm into Erik’s coat.  Not exactly sure how to pick back up or how to move forward, Erik resorts to the most base of occupations and pulls another drag.  
  
He drops the nearly-kicked cigarette onto the concrete ground when Charles catches his lips, when Charles inhales and pulls the air from Erik’s lungs.  
  
Charles exhales a flimsy wisp of Erik’s smoke before capturing his mouth again.  
  
Erik would put up some token measure of resistance, but.  Well.  Technically, he’s probably still a little under the weather.


	38. Chapter 38

“Have you read that?”  Angel asks, stealing back the first section of the paper, despite the fact that there are still plenty of unread portions, scattered along the couch between them.  
  
“No, not yet,”  Charles drawls, smiling, thinking it ought to be obvious, seeing as to how she’d just nicked it from his hands.  It's the second day since Erik's resumed his work schedule, and the two of them are left to settle into familiar routines.  
  
Angel seems unfazed.  “The bit about Wyoming.”  
  
“Their acting governor?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Just the headline.”  
  
“ _And_?”  
  
“Law enforcement are allowed to ask for identification, without cause.  It’s federal law,”  Charles says, if a bit carefully.  
  
Wyoming has never been a state known for strong Pet regulation enforcement-- any really, that what identification laws support.  In the wake of the Governor Baldridge’s recent heart attack, the role of acting governor is apparently taken by the Secretary of State;  Wyoming’s Jack Thyra is apparently in favour of cracking down on the state’s lax policies, and apparently first on the list is screening for identification in emergency rooms.  
  
“Doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up.”  
  
Stict adherence with the law makes sense to Charles;  were he out with Logan, walking Caesar, and they were both struck by a car, or something, he’d want Erik to be notified immediately.  Such measures were originally enacted to safeguard Pets, to ensure that someone with both their best interest at heart and the legal authority to advocate for it could have a say in emergency treatments.  It’s not as though the law does something absurd, like deny medical care to injured Pets.  These laws don’t put _Pets_ at risk;  it’s only problematic for people who lack identification documentation-- and Charles can’t see why any free citizen wouldn’t have the appropriate documentation.  
  
He doesn’t doubt that her own experiences within the system were damaging, and stories like that break Charles's heart.  Rejecting the assistance of the system, however, is hardly the answer.  Identifying Pets only helps them, by giving them governmental protection from the very injustices he’s certain Angel has endured.  But he suspects Angel doesn’t see this as a medical advocacy issue.  
  
“That’s not the answer you want to give,”  he says carefully.  
  
“What?”  she asks, with a sort of innocence that, from Angel, seems jarring.  
  
“In public-- in front of anyone.”  Even him, lest any of them get lazy about it.  “If you want to object to it, gripe about federal overreaching and enumerated powers.  Not ‘fucked-up-edness,’”  he adds with a smirk before stealing back the newspaper from her.  “Otherwise you’re going to get yourself, and Erik, into trouble.”  
  
“Erik’s fine--”  
  
Charles chuckles a little.  Even if he hadn’t grasped the whole of the situation right away, he’d noticed quickly enough that Erik hadn’t really wanted him as a Pet.  “Erik’s liberalism bleeds through very quickly.  It’d take little enough time in his company for any Pet to pick up on it.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, what a Pet notices, an owner may hear about.”  
  
“What owner uses their Pet to mine for that sort of information?”  
  
“The clever ones.”  If his tone is a little sharp, it's only because it's as if she's deliberately trying to be obtuse.  “Not all owners are idiots.”  
  
As much as Charles wants to rationalise her stance by blaming it on the fact that she’s just become accustomed to Erik, it’s no excuse;  it’s not as though it’s some horrible tactic that Erik’s above employing when he feels it’s necessary.  While he might never have done it to _her_ , it’s not like Erik’s holding some moral high ground here, and it’s not as if she doesn’t know that.  
  
So it’s just willful ignorance.  
  
It must be obvious that he’s bothered, because she stops pushing and lets Charles turn his attention back to the newspaper.  The quiet lasts long enough for him smooth down his proverbial ruffled feathers, but no longer.  
  
“Shaw was a clever owner?”  she asks, her tone atypically neutral.  
  
Without looking up, Charles simply says,  “Very.”  
  
The second question takes longer to come, but it just as mildly put:  “Was he a _good_ owner?”  
  
“Depends on who you ask.”  Never mind that she’d literally just asked _him_.  
  
“Look, I know that you... that you cared about him, but-- didn’t he abuse you?”  At least she manages to ask the question, rather than demand that she agree with him.   
  
The sentiment, however, is getting old to the point of tedious.  What difference could applying some semantic distinction possibly make, especially after the fact?  
  
Yes, Sebastian had beaten him, but at least Sebastian had loved him, too.  At least there had been rules to follow, and rewards for good behaviour, and ways to anticipate what was coming.  For the most part.  
  
And he’d choose that life over the chaotic, unpredictable mess things had become after his mother remarried.  
  
Keeping his gaze sliding smoothly across the print in front of him, he says,  “Perfection isn’t a prerequisite for my affection.”  
  
He doesn’t miss Angel’s small sigh.  “Okay, fine.  But didn’t you ever wish he’d treat you differently?”  
  
Charles blinks.  
  
‘ _No_ ,’ is the right answer.  The easy, obvious answer.  Good Pets aren’t really supposed to have those sorts of wishes.  Preferences are fine, of course - because there’s little point to a personal Pet without one - but some things just aren’t questioned.    
  
With Sebastian, not questioning that had been simple.  Automatic.  In Erik’s household, however, there are infinitely more questions than instructions, and an inconvenient fixation on what Charles _wants_.  He’d had to learn how to want treatment other than what he was receiving.  So it would make sense for him to draw a blank at that sort of question.  
  
That would make sense.  
  
The creeping fear inching up his spine does not.  The twinge of guilt beneath the fear is even more baffling.  The only reason for feeling guilty would be if he’d actually done something wrong-- but that’s ridiculous, because it would imply that Charles might have actually wanted something different.  Something else.  
  
Something deep in his core wants to panic, wants someone to grab him and shake him and remind him that if he lets himself learn to think like this, it might make adjusting to a new owner absolutely excruciating.  Maybe even impossible.    
  
When his pulse starts to throb along his throat, Charles wishes Erik was home, instead of back at the office.  
  
It’s different with Erik.  His questions, Charles answers as an active choice of obedience.  For Erik, he can break himself down.  
  
For Angel, all he can do is stare at her, lips press firmly together.  She stares right back, and he can’t tell if she’s actually waiting for an answer, or if she’s just watching him.  
  
With a completely straight face and level tone, Angel grants him a reprieve:  “Or we could just make brownies.”  
  
“Let’s just make brownies,” Charles says, his tongue feeling too thick for his mouth.  
  
Without waiting for him, she pops up from her seat and heads towards the kitchen-- Charles is just grateful for the opportunity to pry his hands from the now-crumpled newspaper in his grasp.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another quickie, before another chunk

“What do you mean, ‘you saw him’?”  The words hiss past Erik’s tightly clenched jaw, but neither Angel nor Logan so much as flinch.  
  
“He means that’s _all_ that happened,”  Angel jumps in, crossing her arms over her chest, mimicking Logan’s posture.  
  
The sound of creaking leather cuts through the silence of the living room as Erik’s grip tightens around the handle of his briefcase.  Only now does it become apparent that they’d all but ambushed him the moment he’d stepped inside.  Immediately, his thoughts rush to Charles, and the only thing that keeps Erik from asking after him is that Angel seems to have just answered that.  
  
“And did Shaw see _you_?”  he presses, instead, trying not to resent the fact that they've barely let him step inside his own home.  
  
“He was on his phone the entire way from the restaurant door to the car,”  Logan says, thankfully taking this a little more seriously than Angel apparently does.  “Even if we’d been on his side of the street, he wouldn’t have noticed us.”  
  
It’s a reflexive impulse, to try to glean as many details as possible-- and Erik doesn’t even know why he should feel badly about that, when they’re both standing there insisting that nothing happened and that Charles is fine.  “Was he alone?”  
  
If Angel disapproves of his getting sidetracked, she mostly hides it.  
  
“Someone was waiting for him in the car, but it’s not like I waited around to try to get a good look,”  Logan says, easily enough.  
  
Erik nods.  “Good.”  
  
How helpful would it really have been, when it was probably Shaw’s assistant or wife?  Not enough to dawdle, to give Shaw more of an opportunity to spot Charles.  
  
Exhaling audibly, Erik sidesteps the both of them and lets his briefcase land in the nearest chair.  
  
“He’s _fine_ ,”  Angel insists to his back-- even if she does add, a moment later,  “Quiet, but fine.”  
  
When Erik looks over his shoulder, it’s Logan he’s looking to; and when Logan nods, so does he.  Angel frowns and smacks Logan in the arm, as though it’s his fault that Erik had wanted a second opinion.  
  
“He’s upstairs.”  Her words ring faintly indignant.  “Your room.”  
  
Erik supposes that better than Charles hiding in his own room.  In that, it seems to imply that doesn’t feel the need to hide, at all.  Still, he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t afford Charles a bit of space.  
  
“Dinner’s in an hour,”  Angel says.  He can’t tell if the force of expectation behind it is intended for himself or for Logan.  “ _Family_ dinner.  Attendance is mandatory.  For everybody.”


	40. Chapter 40

Erik finds Charles sitting on the floor, dividing his attention between the book in one hand and the chew toy in the other.  Caesar doesn’t seem to notice Charles’s distraction, and he only notes Erik’s arrival when he joins Charles on the floor, leaning back against the side of the bed.  
  
The words are on the tip of his tongue-- a question about how Charles is doing, but when Charles looks up at him, face impassive, Erik keeps quiet.  Instead, he appropriates the chew toy from Charles’s grasp and takes up the task of amusing the dog.    
  
Were Erik in Charles’s position, he’d probably be sick to death of people asking him how he’s doing.  For a few minutes they just sit next to each other.  Caesar occasionally gets excited and lets out a happy little growl as he tries to wrest the bone-shaped toy from Erik's grasp.  Charles turns one page, and then another, of his book.  
  
  
It nearly startles Charles when Erik speaks:  “Can I ask you something?”  
  
After noting the page number, Charles sets aside the book and looks up to Erik, giving a nod.  It might be silly to ask for a question with a question, but Charles supposes it means he can refuse to answer.  
  
“Did you love him?  Shaw?”  
  
There’s no answer that will please Erik.  Then again, Erik’s pleasure doesn’t quite seem to be the priority, however contrary the notion seems.  
  
“Should I not have?”  he returns, expecting Erik’s reaction to be emphatic, at the very least.  
  
“I don’t know,”  Erik says softly.  
  
Charles can’t help but stare.  Without really knowing why, he can feel the corners of his mouth twitch upwards.  Maybe it’s just nice, not to have someone telling him how to feel about things.  
  
One of his hands finds its way to Erik’s, stealing back the chew toy-- and with it, Caesar’s attention.  
  
“I like being here,”  he says, wishing such things could be enough for Erik.  But it matters too much to Erik, that Charles see him as different from Sebastian.  Better, really.  Different is easy.  Of course they’re different.  But better?   _Better_  implies a judgement of value.  Of preference.  
  
And he can all but see the question towards that welling up within Erik.  
  
“You treat me well.”  The moment the words are out of his mouth, Erik looks at him, almost startled, and Charles has to smile, even if he regrets that Erik finds such a revelation surprising.  “It can be challenging,”  he has has to concede,  “but--”  
  
“That’s not my intention,”  Erik gently interrupts, just as Caesar flops onto his side between Charles’s legs.  “I just want you to be able to be yourself.”  
  
“I like knowing what’s expected of me.  And I don’t like being useless-- idle,”  Charles quickly tacks on, lest Erik fixate on the word ‘useless.’  “Those are parts of who I am.”  
  
“I know.”  There’s something sad in the curve of Erik’s lips.  
  
Were there a proper time to press for information about Erik’s illicit dealings, this would probably be it, but Charles lets the opportunity pass by.  The best way Charles can keep them all safe is by knowing as little as possible-- a rare thing on which everyone seems to agree.  
  
However, there are things Charles actually does want to know.  “Is Caesar mine?”  
  
Erik just blinks.  
  
“You didn’t take him because your mother told you to-- did you get him for me to take care of?”  
  
“For you to have,”  Erik insists, and rather smoothly.  “Part of having him is taking care of him.”  
  
Charles smiles, fairly certain that he sees through that.  He understands why Erik had presented Caesar as a task-- a job.  He’d needed some sort of occupation, on top of lessons.  
  
“Thank you, Erik,”  he says softly, leaning his head against Erik’s shoulder, which gives a jostle that he supposes comes from Erik nodding his head.  
  
“You’re really all right.”  It’s hard to tell whether it’s a statement or a question, despite the faint incredulity underpinning Erik’s tone.  
  
Oh.  Right.  Sebastian.  
  
“I really am,”  Charles says.  And he is.  “To be honest, I was almost surprised by how long it took, for our paths to cross.”  
  
Or he would have been, except that Sebastian’s no doubt quite occupied with his fiancee.  
  
Perhaps Erik suspects deflection on Charles’s part, because he feels the need to say,  “I know he hurt you.”  
  
For the love of god, not this.  Again.  “ _Erik_ \--”  
  
“When he sold you.”  
  
Oh.  
  
“It hurts, being sent away,”  Erik adds, and it resonates with something other than pity.  
  
All Charles can do is nod.  He doesn’t really understand why Erik’s talking like this.  There's hardly any need for it.  
  
“I don’t ever want to hurt you like that.”  
  
Charles’s throat all but collapses down on itself.  He has to open his mouth and tip back his head, just to inhale.  “Erik, please--”  
  
“It’s not a promise,”  Erik says, firm, but not sharp.  “There are circumstances we can’t anticipate.  But I don’t want to put you through that. Again.”  
  
Without knowing what he’s looking for, Charles just stares at Erik.  It makes no sense at all, how it can feel as though the floor is slipping out from under his feet when he’s sitting down.  
  
“Erik!”  Charles startles at the sound of Angel’s voice from downstairs.  “Charles!  Pizza’s here!”  
  
While Erik frowns at the doorway, Charles tries to get his heartrate back down to a normal range.  
  
   
   
  
“What do you mean, you want to ‘ _borrow Charles_ ’?”  Erik snaps into his phone, shifting so that his elbows rest atop his desk.  
  
“Must your mind reside in the gutter?”  Azazel has the audacity to chuckle.  “It is an important dinner with our partners from the international offices.”  
  
“And aren’t they all bringing their _own_ Pets?”  It’s ridiculous, really, that Azazel would want to borrow Charles for this sort of thing.  While Azazel might have invited Angel to these little dinner parties, he’d always just called Erik beforehand to check first, to be polite--  or really, just to make sure she wasn't busy with something else.  It’s a far cry from asking to _borrow_ someone.  
  
“Not at all.  My boss is bringing his daughter, her mother is French, so she speaks French-- does not Charles speak French as well?”  And of course it sounds fucking reasonable when Azazel says it like that.    
  
“So why ask to _borrow_ him?”  Erik doesn’t like the word.    
  
“I asked to borrow him for dinner.”  An edge sneaks itself into Azazel’s voice.  “He would not like it, if I simply invited him.  And he would like it even less, if you approved.  So.  I am asking, very nicely, if you will loan me your French-speaking Pet to delight my boss’s daughter.”  
  
All right.  So, at least Azazel hasn’t totally lost his mind.  This, Erik thinks he can pitch to Charles-- in a way that doesn’t make Charles feel as though Erik’s half a breath from selling him.    
  
Though he’ll be damned if he uses any words that even sound remotely like ‘loan’ or ‘borrow.’  
  
“Seriously.  Would it have killed you to just open with _that_?”


	41. Chapter 41

“You actually want to go to this thing,”  Angel says, a little baffled, as she watches Charles fiddle with his cufflinks.  
  
Charles doesn’t see why she’s so surprised.  “Erik says you sometimes go to these sorts of things.”  
  
“No, I went to _one_ of those things,”  she scoffs.  “Parties?  Fine.  They’ve always got champagne and enormous shrimp.  The one dinner-thing was so boring I seriously considered knocking over a candle to set the tablecloth on fire.”  
  
It’s worryingly easy to picture.  
  
“I’m sure I’ll be able to amuse myself,”  he assures her as she crosses the living room to give him one final inspection.  
  
Meanwhile, his gaze drifts over to where Erik sits on the far end of the couch-- oddly enough, with his phone against his ear and another mobile resting atop his knee.  A moment after their eyes meet, Erik glances him over, and Charles has to suppress a smile;  it gets more difficult when one corner of Erik’s mouth lifts a little.  
  
Erik hadn’t seemed wild about the whole idea when he’d first mentioned Azazel’s invitation last week.  Really, Charles suspects the only reason Erik hadn’t rejected it out of hand is because it’s an opportunity for Charles to  _do_  something.  
  
Trying to tease out whether or not going was the right thing to do became so exhausting that Charles just gave up and went with the most basic of facts:  Charles finds these sorts of things stimulating, and he finds Azazel’s company perfectly safe.  
  
Angel recaptures his attention when she shifts his collar slightly, so it sits more evenly against the open collar of his shirt.  “Anyway, it’s probably for the best that it’s not some party.  I’m starting to think we might be sort of cursed when it comes to parties--  or at least, Erik is.”  
  
Erik glares at Angel, and though Charles manages to contain a laugh, Logan’s echoes down the bottle of his beer.  When Erik snaps his phone shut, Charles hopes it’s because the call is actually finished-- Erik’s been on the phone for the better part of twenty minutes already.  
  
“Oh, because the last one was such a raging success,”  Angel drawls.  
  
Truth be told, Charles would rather not let his thoughts linger on the last party they’d all gone to, so he’s grateful that Erik ignores the comment.  
  
Pressing the new mobile into Charles’s hand, Erik says,  “It’s for you.  Not just for tonight-- but, if you need anything tonight, all of our numbers are already programmed into it.”  
  
Erik's frankly excessive concern about Charles’s well-being is almost painfully endearing.  “I’m sure I’ll be in good hands with Azazel,”  Charles says, all but grinning.  
  
Half a beat after Erik snorts a disbelieving huff, Logan gives a low chuckle.  Angel and Erik immediately glance in his direction, but Logan just shrugs a shoulder.  
  
  
  
  
“It is a pity Erik does not put you to more use than he does-- or perhaps, it is a pity that Erik is hesitant to put you to more professional use,”  Azazel says, just after the bartender delivers their drinks.  
  
“I’m happy to fulfill whatever needs he might have,”  Charles says, glad to be able to put a bit of an edge behind it.  Azazel has a teasing sense of humour that’s more politic than Angel’s-- which puts Charles into territory made more comfortable by virtue of familiarity.  
  
Azazel’s chuckle gives way to an amiable quiet.  It’s entirely novel to Charles, to be the first arrivals at any sort of social event.  For Azazel, however, this is something of a standard practice;  he seems perfectly content to wait at the restaurant bar until the table is ready.  
  
“I would have had you for my own, you know;  in a professional capacity.”  Something to Azazel’s smile sharpens.  “In addition to whatever else I might come up with.”  
  
Although Azazel’s hands are kept neatly to himself, Charles is immediately keenly aware of where his hands are, how far away they are.  Azazel’s never given Charles reason to worry, and he’s reluctant to overreact to what is most likely an attempt to pay him a compliment.  
  
“I wouldn’t say as much to Erik, were I you,”  he says, his tone revealing nothing, before taking a larger sip of his scotch than he’d intended.  “He might not take it for the compliment you intend it to be.”  
  
“I offered to buy you once.”  
  
“When?”  Charles asks, before he can think better of it.  
  
He can feel himself already blushing before Azazel says,  “Ages ago.  The night of the firm’s party.”  
  
Charles means to say more, to press for details, but his tongue refuses to comply.  It’s too easy to imagine Azazel making a compelling pitch, which makes the fact that--  
  
“He seemed offended that I even asked,”  Azazel carries on, regardless.  “I was barely able to broach the topic before he made clear his disinterest in the prospect.”  
  
Charles’s brow gives a quick tick of confusion.  “He didn’t even entertain the offer?”  
  
“He never even let me put a figure to it.”  Azazel leans in a little closer, but not close enough to cross the lines of propriety.  “It would have been a large figure;  I am sure he knows this.”  
  
Charles’s stomach gives a strange flutter.  He glances down to find his own glass empty.  
  
Azazel, quite graciously, swaps out his glass for Charles’s.  Although Charles doesn’t care much for gin and tonic, he drinks some, anyway.  
  
He has to ask, however,  “Was it a sincere offer?”  
  
Erik and Azazel have known each other for years.  It’s not outside the range of possibility that Azazel would be able to predict Erik’s reluctance--  that Azazel might have asked only to be able to report that Erik had declined the opportunity.  
  
It’s more what’s in Azazel’s eyes than in his tone that has Charles believing him when he says,  “Had he let me, I would have found uses for you.”  He gives a sigh that Charles is almost positive is a dramatization.  “But, alas; he was not to be moved.”  
  
Before Charles can prod any further on the matter, someone from the restaurant staff pops up to inform them that the table’s now ready.  
  
  
  
  
“Charles?  Are you all right?”  Erik’s voice comes out entirely too strained.  Charles can’t help smiling into his phone, even as he steps aside to afford a little more room for the gentleman on his way to the men’s room.  
  
“Perfectly fine-- I just thought it might be a good idea to give you a call and to tell you so,”  he says quickly.  It’s not as though he wants to torment Erik.  “We’ve just ordered dessert.  It seemed like a good time to check in.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
In the background, he can hear Angel holler, “See?  I told you!”  
  
Charles opts to let that slide without comment.  “So, I expect to be home in about an hour.  I assume you’ll still be up?”  
  
“Oh.  Yeah-- yes.”  
  
“Okay.  I’ll see you then,”  he says.  “And thank you, for letting me do this.”  
  
“Charles--”  
  
“ _Erik_ ,”  he says quickly.  He doesn’t want to hear about how it had been Charles’s choice, and all that.  Yes, it had been, but it’s delusional to pretend as though Erik couldn’t have said no, regardless.  
  
The silence hangs for a moment.  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
  
  
  
“You’ve really got to learn to behave,”  Erik says dryly, arching a brow towards where Charles perches on the edge of his desk.  
  
Not that he’s complaining about Charles venturing downstairs to the offices to drop things off from Angel.  Despite Erik’s reservations, it seems that letting Azazel take Charles out for a business function was for the best.  Perhaps it shouldn’t be so terribly surprising;  if Erik had to sit around without much to do all day, he’d probably go out of his mind.  
  
He’s only half-joking when he says,  “If you weren’t so distracting, I’m sure we could find something for you to do around the office.”  
  
Charles’s smile is downright wicked.  “If you want me to pretend to be your secretary, Mr. Lehnsherr, all you need do is ask.”  
  
Like that.  That’s what he means by Charles being distracting.    
  
And then, of course, there’s the matter of his own waning self-control; he doesn’t even move to stop Charles from slipping into his lap.  The way his thoughts slink back towards memories of Charles bringing himself off astride Erik’s legs, he doesn’t think he has to fault himself for.  
  
There’s no excuse, however, when his hands settle onto Charles’s hips, when his fingertips splay themselves along the inviting curve of Charles’s arse.  His renewed persistence about wanting Erik to fuck him is getting difficult to ignore.  And his own reluctance is getting harder to justify.  
  
“Could be fun,”  Charles says, close enough for the words to register warm against Erik’s lips.  
  
And then the desk phone rings.  Charles has the nerve to smirk, leans back, and pick up the receiver.  
  
“Mr. Lehnsherr’s office,”  he purrs out, their eyes locked together as he toys with on the buttons on Erik’s shirt.  “Oh, hello, Mr. Romanov.”  
  
Just perfect.  
  
Really, Erik ought to be more relieved than he feels.  Of course, it’s hard to be relieved when he’s sitting there, half hard, expecting Charles to vacate his lap at any moment.  Not that he actually has any intention of _doing_  anything.  Not here.  In his office.  In the middle of the afternoon.  
  
Charles barely even seems to be paying attention to whatever Azazel's saying; were it someone other than Azazel, Erik might have minded.  He’s watching the progress of his fingertips down the front of Erik’s shirt as he says,  “Thank you, so did I.”  
  
“ _Charles_ ,” Erik warns in a low voice, just as those fingertips pass over his belt buckle.  
  
The fabricated look of utter innocence that drapes itself over Charles’s face just makes Erik want to make threats about putting Charles over his knee-- except Erik knows _exactly_ how that would end, and this is precisely why Charles absolutely cannot spend any serious amount of time in the offices.  
  
“Yes, he’s available.”  Charles’s cheery tone snaps Erik back to the moment at hand.  
  
Wearing what he hopes resembles a scowl, Erik holds out his hand for the phone.  For just a moment, Charles lingers on Erik’s lap, one hand still resting against his abdomen.  Whether he’s dreading or hoping that Charles will just drop to his knees on the floor between the chair and desk, Erik can’t even begin to tell.  
  
But all Charles does is lean forward to softly say against Erik’s ear, “Maybe next time.”  
  
There’s no way Charles misses how Erik’s cock strains against his trousers before he stands up.  When Erik shoots him a glare, Charles just returns an entirely-too-smug smile.  
  
“What could you possibly want?”  Erik grumbles into the phone as he watches Charles head for the door.


	42. Chapter 42

Charles has this habit of sometimes joining Erik in the shower.  Not that Erik’s complaining.  
  
It’s difficult to complain about anything, when he has his arms wrapped around a sopping wet Charles-- who lets out a soft, hopeful sound as Erik’s fingertips graze along the slick pucker of his entrance.  
  
Wait.  Slick?  That’s not water.  
  
“Charles?  What the hell--”  
  
Without a trace of shame, Charles breathes out, “I’ve been prepping every day for a while now, just in case-- just in case you changed your mind.  Didn’t want to have to waste the time.”  
  
Once the words register properly in Erik’s mind, he can’t help testing, just to see-- and sure enough, his middle finger slips easily into Charles. “You do this every day?”  
  
Charles manages a sloppy nod as he tries to rock his hips back against Erik’s hand.  It’s almost too much, to think about Charles stretching himself out and lubing himself up-- hoping, and wanting.  
  
“The other day, in my office?”  He crowds in closer, trapping Charles’s erection against his thigh.  
  
Spine arching, Charles breathes, “You could’ve bent me over your desk fucked me without.... without any preamble.”  
  
How Charles can make words like _preamble_ sound filthy, he doesn’t even know.  “Fuck, Charles.”  
  
“Please,”  Charles keens against the side of Erik’s neck, and it’s as if his whole body clamps down on Erik’s finger.  
  
Looking for a way to shut Charles up, Erik adds another, despite the awkward angle.  He doesn’t even have to work at it-- the extra digit just slides into the searing vise of Charles’s arse and he isn’t sure which one of them just groaned.  
  
“Such a tease when you want to be,” he growls out.  It’s futile, trying to get the idea of fucking Charles in his office out of his head.  “Had half a mind to put you over my knee.”  
  
Charles’s breath snags sharply and before Erik realises what he’s doing, Charles turns, pressing his back flush against Erik’s chest, wedging Erik’s cock into the cleft of his arse.  
  
“You could’ve,” he rasps, and it’s all Erik can do to keep from crushing Charles against the wall.  “Could’ve spanked me for bothering you at work just because I needed to be fucked.”  
  
One of Erik’s hands slaps itself against the tile, just next to Charles’s head.  For balance.  Or to keep his hand from doing something else.  
  
This is ridiculous.  He can’t even remember what point he’s trying to prove anymore.  
  
“And you’d be able to feel it, when I got hard, and you could’ve just spanked me harder, for being a cock-hungry little slut.”  Charles’s voice bounces around the shower, clouding out whatever was left of Erik’s sense and reason.  
  
“Would you beg me to stop?”  Erik doesn’t recognise his own voice.  And he can’t even remember when he’d started rutting against Charles’s wet skin, like an animal.  
  
“No.”  The word comes out low and sharp.  Charles grabs at Erik wrist, pulling the hand from its hold of his hip, wrapping Erik’s grasp around the base of his own cock.  “I’d tell you no, that it wouldn’t be enough just to be fucked--  that I wanted it from you, that it had to be you--”  
  
Erik’s cock throbs so hard that for a moment he thinks he’s coming.  He’s amazed that he hasn’t already, with the way Charles is writhing between his hand and his hips, like he was born and bred to be some kind of guilty pleasure.  Just watching Charles like this would probably be enough-- every sinuous line of him highlighted by water sluicing down his body.  
  
“Could you come just from that, just from me fucking you?”  he growls against Charles’s shoulder.  
  
“Yes,”  Charles hisses, just before he leans back, looping his arms behind his head to encircle Erik’s neck.  It gives him a new sort of leverage to grind back against Erik. “‘S all I’d need-- just you, filling me up--”  
  
Whatever else Charles says is lost in the crash of Erik’s release.  When reality knits itself back together around him, he’s got his teeth buried in Charles’s shoulder and he’s fisting Charles’s cock for all he’s worth.    
  
And it worth it’s perfect when Charles sags against him, coming against the shower wall.  
  
“Fuck-- fucking hell, Charles,” Erik all but coughs out.  He’s going to lay down some ground rules about office visits.  
  
He ought to, anyway.  
  
  
  
  
“You say these things, Erik,” Azazel scoffs. “‘ _Can a Pet truly desire his owner?_ ’  -- How is it different from asking, ‘Can someone truly be hungry, just because something appetising is placed in front of them?’”  
  
Erik glares.  He really needs to stop letting himself meet with Azazel in the mornings.  “Don’t you think it’s just a bit too convenient, that I magically happen to be Charles’s type?”  
  
Another dismissive sound.  “‘ _Type_.’  As though such things limit his interests.”  
  
“A starving man thinks any slop put before him is fantastic.”  Charles being interested in him just because he doesn’t have any other option isn’t terribly reassuring.  
  
“Oh, come now.  You must not think of yourself as ‘ _slop_.’”  
  
“ _Azazel_ ,”  he snaps.  
  
Picking up one of the mugs of coffee Angel had laid out them in Erik’s study, he asks, “You love your mother, do you not?”  
  
“Yes.”  He can already see where Azazel’s going with this, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.  “And yes, I realise I didn’t pick _her_ any more than Charles picked me, but it’s different.”  
  
“Why?  At any time, your mother could have chosen to beat you or starve you, abandon you or drown you in the bathtub,” he points out.  Only Azazel could make such things sound dull and tedious.  
  
“She would never have--”  
  
“Because she loves you, as well, yes, yes.”  He sounds bored as he settles back down into the chair in front of Erik’s desk.  “She loved you from the moment you were born, when you were nothing more than a screaming mouth to feed and a diaper to change.  While you had more needs than personality or character, she loved you-- and you, in your infantile selfishness, loved the woman who provided for you.  This, apparently, is moral and just?”  
  
Erik doesn’t say a damned thing.  
  
“And here, there is a boy, who believes someone chose him for his qualities: intellectual, physical, sexual, the lot of them.  Do you find it so strange that this alone might cultivate love, when his mother and adoptive father sold him away for no reason?”  
  
“No reason?” That doesn’t make sense.  Just because there’s no reason on paper doesn’t mean one didn’t exist; no one sells a child off as a Pet on a whim.  
  
“What reason is good enough, for a child so young?”  That, Erik can’t argue with.  “I still fail to see what the rush was, why they felt the need to lie about Charles’s age in the first place.”  
  
“What?” Erik’s going to be sick, he just knows it.  
  
“I have gotten my hands onto Charles’s original birth records; he’ll be turning eighteen this year.”  
  
That’s not possible. “Azazel, all of his paperwork--”  
  
“As best I can tell, the deception was made at the initial sale.  Now, could you please direct your gaze to the silver lining here?”  
  
“What the fuck--”  
  
“The legal age for such sales is seven.  According to Charles’s birth cert--”  
  
“He was six.”  
  
“So his sale was?”  
  
“Illegal.”  
  
“And therefore?”  
  
“Invalid.”  
  
  
  
  
“He’s a _minor_?” Angel hisses, glancing over her shoulder towards the entrance to the kitchen, as if Charles is going to materialise out of thin air.  
  
Which is ridiculous.  The reason this is the perfect time to tell Angel is because Charles is on the roof with a landscaper, and the elevator will give them plenty of warning.  They’ll be able to hear it from the kitchen.  
  
“Technically,” Erik says firmly.  
  
“What d’you mean ‘ _technically_ ’?  He’s seventeen-- oh, god, was he _twelve_ when Shaw adopted him?”  Erik doesn’t even get a chance to respond before Angel is flailing her hands.  “That’s so gross-- how can you be okay with this?”  
  
“I’m not okay with _any_ of this,” he snaps.    
  
It’s not as if he approves-- but he also doesn’t see the point in making a huge fuss when, to Charles, it won’t mean anything.  Besides, it’s not as if Charles hasn’t been treated like an adult for years.  Erik isn’t about to just discredit that because Charles fails to meet some numerical requirement.  
  
“Besides, Azazel said I probably shouldn’t say anything to him about it,” he adds.  And Azazel’s right about at least one thing: if he isn’t going to tell Charles, then he can’t just start acting differently.  Charles will only interpret that to mean that he’s done something wrong.  
  
“Why _not_?” she demands.  “Why not just tell him-- he has a right to know.”  
  
“Because that’s _all_ we have right now.”  It’s completely obnoxious, to have to have the same argument twice, even if he’s now on the other side of it.  “If we told him, what’s the next question?  He’d want to know _why_ , and I can’t tell him that because _I don’t know_.”  
  
To that, she has no answer.  It’s somewhat satisfying, because neither had he, when Azazel had made the same point.  
  
“There’re still too many unanswered questions,” he says, a bit more evenly.  “Obviously, the Markos had to know, but did the School?  And if the School knew, did Shaw?”  
  
Shaw.  If Shaw knew--  Pets like Charles, they’re supposed to be better protected.  Private sales between individuals can get shady, but Schools are supposed to be reputable.  They’re supposed to be regulated-- it’s how they allegedly ensure quality.  They get state and federal tax breaks based on ethical compliance, and that includes abiding by guidelines that prohibit a school from adopting out a Pet under the age of thirteen.  
  
“Is this just about getting Shaw?”  Angel asks.  
  
Erik doesn’t have to look up to know she’s crossed her arms over her chest.  And he doesn’t have to wonder as to why it feels like a low blow.  “Do you really think if we told him that he’d just snap out of it?  That he’d look around and say, ‘Oh, well, I guess I’m not a Pet anymore’?”  
  
Angel sighs.  But she doesn’t argue.  
  
“Besides,” Erik says after a moment.  “It’s not entirely a bad thing.”  He ignores Angel’s glare.  “If we can get this sorted out before Charles turns eighteen, he can still inherit his father’s estate.”  
  
Neither one of them is expecting it when Charles’s voice croaks out, “ _What_?”  
  
How the hell had neither of them heard the elevator?


	43. Chapter 43

“No, it’s a mistake,” Charles insists, for probably the tenth time.

Angel tries, “Charles--”

“I’m eighteen!  I know how old I am!”  When Angel and Erik share a glance, Charles only seems more irate.  “I’m certain it’s a mistake.  Some kind of clerical error.”

“But if your stepfather wanted to get rid of you, that’d be a clever way to do it,”  she says quickly.

Erik is just glad the landscaper had the good sense to get the hell out of the apartment.

“That doesn’t even--”

“Did they ever tell you?  Why the sold you?”  Erik asks.  The room around him hums with an insistent sort of silence.  He doesn’t look up from his coffee as he says, “Charles.  I asked you a question.”

And Angel, and all her glares, can go right to hell for all Erik cares at the moment. Charles, for his part, says nothing, jaw clenched tightly shut.

"So how about everyone stops making assumptions about the motives involved,” Erik says, as if he doesn’t already have a pretty good idea.  “Maybe they had good reasons, and maybe they were just greedy sons of bitches.”

“ _Erik_ ,” Charles practically growls.

“Azazel will be back tomorrow-- with actual information." And, hopefully, a copy of Brian Xavier's will.  "We can deal with this then.”

Angel throws up her hands.  Swearing under her breath, she just storms out of the kitchen.  Whether she’s more upset with him or Charles, it’s hard to tell.

Once she’s gone, the few feet that separate him from Charles seems all the more expansive.

“Would you rather not know?” he asks, not entirely surprised to find Charles staring at the floor.

“I don’t know,” Charles mumbles.  

It sounds like ayes, but Erik is too tired to bother putting words in Charles’s mouth.  If he thought it might put Charles at ease, he’d mention that he hadn’t wanted to tell Charles until there was more to tell.  Erik just isn’t sure how that would help.

“Charles.”  He waits until Charles looks up.  “I’m not sending you away.”  

That’s what alarms Charles, isn’t it? Little wonder there, Erik has to suppose. When your own family does that to you, maybe it would make more sense to believe that some who'd paid for him might actually bother to give a damn.

From the way Charles blinks and looks away, he thinks it might have been the right thing to say.

He holds out his hand, waiting patiently for Charles to notice; once Charles takes it, Erik pulls him close.  Sitting on the kitchen stool, he’s able to tuck Charles’s back against his chest, able to rest his chin on Charles’s shoulder.

“That’s not what this is about.  Understand?”  He can feel Charles nod, and that’s enough for now.  “If you leave, it’ll be because that’s what you want.”

Again, Charles nods, just as silently.

It ought to feel like more of a victory.

 

 

“We’re just talking about options, Charles,” Erik says quietly.  “ _Your_ options.”

He's retreated to couch in his office; it was the only safe option, given the way Charles paces and the fact that Azazel has claimed the fortress of Erik's desk chair.

“No we’re not-- not legally.  If I’m really a minor-” Erik tries not to roll his eyes, “-then nullifying my contract with you would make _him_ my legal guardian.”

“Cain is hardly your next of--”

“I haven’t got any next of kin!”  Upon hearing the volume of his own voice, Charles collects himself.  He lets out a slow breath before he says, “Kurt legally adopted me - as his son - after he married my mother.  If not Cain, then who?  Some court-appointed guardian?”

There’s a cynicism in Charles’s voice that seems new.  It’s probably for the best, even if it make Erik want to cringe a little.  “Charles--”

“I don’t care about the money,” he insists.  “And neither should you-- when it comes down to it, you can’t go after it, anyway.”

“Of course we can,” Erik sighs, feeling as though they’re going backwards.  “Your stepfather wanted you out of the way to get at _your_ inheritance, but being sold can't possibly meet the requirements for incapacitation, he never should have been able to get anywhere near--"

“No, not _you_ ,” Charles says quickly, his eyes flicking over to Azazel.  “Cain’s a client of the firm-- to represent both parties would present a conflict of interest, and Cain’s net worth exceeds Erik’s.  The most viable option would be for the firm to side with Cain and you’d probably have to drop Erik as a client--”

“He’s not.”  And fuck it all if Azazel doesn’t actually sound legitimately fond as he says it.  At least he finally gets his damned shoes off of Erik’s desk.  “He was a plus-one.”

Charles blinks, piecing together why Cain had been at that damned party in the first place.  

“Oh.”  Charles opens his mouth, or starts to, but quickly closes it again.  The second time, he manages to say, “Well, then I suppose that’s fine, then.”

It catches up to Erik then-- he’d realised, of course, that Cain’s wealthy, but he’d never thought to put a number to it.  Charles obviously has.  And what it really means is that if they manage to pull this off, Charles may very well wind up obscenely wealthy.

That thought is decidedly less bizarre than the way Azazel is looking at Charles.

“That... Charles, that was very sweet.”  Maybe Azazel’s drunk.  That would explain it.  Despite the fact that it’s barely noon.

And then Charles’s cheekbones go just a touch pink.  

“It was practical,” Charles says, shaking his head a little.

Azazel reaches out his hand, but he sets his palm against the desktop.  “Practicality aside, we would represent Erik.”

Charles glances up from Azazel’s hand, but otherwise doesn’t move.  “Why?”

“Because it would be me who makes the choice.  And I like him.”  Azazel’s smile is so sharp it almost stings to look at.  “He makes me laugh.”

The smile Charles gives in return is small, but no less blinding for it.

One of these days, Erik’s going to make Azazel write down some kind of translation for whatever it is that goes on between the two of them. For the moment, he settles on clearing his throat.

"So.  What would happen next?"  Charles asks, if a bit reluctantly.

"Well, disputing your status would be a very difficult thing.  Some precedents do exist that would work against such a claim, given how long you have been registered as a Pet," Azazel says.  If Erik didn't know any better, he'd think Azazel sounded a little reluctant, himself.

"What if we don't bother?" Charles counters, suddenly animated again.  "What if we contest on Erik's behalf?"

"On the grounds of transference?"  Azazel muses.

Erik is convinced that nothing good from the two of them looking so pleased.

"The will stipulates that if Sharon remarried, everything passed to me-- she only would have been in charge of my finances until I came of age," Charles presses.

"Excepting her stipend," Azazel nods.

As much as Erik had wanted to think Brian would have been a better father than Kurt, it turns out that the size of Sharon's stipend was apparently dependent upon the sex of her offspring; it all smacks a little too Edwardian for Erik for him to put much faith in the imagined Brian Xavier.

"And in the event of my incapacitation, administration of my inheritance would pass to my legal guardian, yes?"

Azazel nods.

"A guardianship Kurt and your mother abdicated," Erik can't help adding, even if he's sure he's playing right into whatever it is Charles wants.

"Then it's a simple matter of correcting an error," Charles says, far too brightly.  "The right to my inheritance would have passed to the School, then to Sebastian, and would now reside with Erik-- Sharon was only supposed to manage it until I came of age, anyway."

Again, Azazel nods, useless sod that he is.

“But this is an opportunity to fix something that never should have happened in the first place.”

“No-- very bad idea,” Azazel says, holding up his hand to put a halt to Erik’s talking.  “You will not find a judge who will overturn Charles’s status, not after so much time has passed.  In Los Angeles, maybe, but not in New York.  Too much precedent to worry about.  Making these kind of waves will win a lot of media attention, but will likely lose you such a claim.”

And, of course, Charles is only too quick to chime right in.  “Doing it _this_ way makes the system work for you.”  Even before Erik can scowl, Azazel is subtly clearing his throat at Charles, who immediately revises:  “It exploits prioritizing owner’s rights over everything else. And you're my owner. If I have something, it's yours.”

Erik arches a brow at Charles to let him know that that wasn’t nearly as slick as he seems to think it was.

“Once the matter of the estate is settled, and Charles is indisputably yours, whatever the two of you decide to do about Charles’s status will be a private issue,” Azazel adds.  “If you elect render Charles’s contract null and void, and then deed to him the entirety of his inheritance, it would be no one else’s business but your own.”

Charles doesn’t meet Erik’s gaze when he looks over.  It courts his temper, the idea that Charles might suspect Erik would nullify the contract, and then renege on the rest.  But it’s not as though he can blame Charles, when everyone he’s loved has sold him off without so much as batting an eye.

Not that Charles loves him.  Not really.

It’s just a figure of speech.


	44. Chapter 44

“Am I the only one who thinks this whole mess is fucking stupid?”  Logan grumbles.

The rooftop is something of a mess-- some half-built platform takes up more than half of the space, and most of what’s left over is cluttered with bags of sand and dirt, to say nothing of the potted shrubs.  It’s something of a small mercy that there’s still enough room for him and Angel to find a spot to share a bit of bourbon while Logan smokes a cigar.

“I dunno,” Angel sighs.  “I mean, Erik lost his dad when he was pretty young, and it’s not like he was able to leave Erik much of anything.  And it’s not like there’s all that much about Charles’s life that he’ll let Erik fix.  It’s not like he can just _free_ Charles.”

Pets like Charles, those sold as children, were sold for life.  Even if Erik freed Charles from their contract, it wouldn’t be impossible - or even all that difficult - for someone else to just come along and claim Charles.  People in New York, they know who Charles is.  They know he’s a Pet.  He’d have to go somewhere no one had so much as seen his face before in order to be even a little safe.

“So, what’s the plan?  Get Charles’s inheritance back and then try to figure out how to legally give it to Charles?”

“More or less,” Angel chuckles, not for a moment sounding as though she thinks it’s really going to work out.  “Apparently, Brian’s will was exacting enough to provide a legally gray area, and you know how courts tend to go, when it’s owners versus past family.”

At that, all Logan can do is make a quiet grumbling sound before lightening the bottle a little before passing it back to Angel.

“Azazel says he gives it a month for Charles to figure out that the real reason Erik’s making such a fuss about the inheritance is to have an excuse to dramatically alter Charles’s contract.”

That perks up his interest.  “Yeah?  How confident?”

Angel’s smile shifts to match Logan’s smirk.  “Hundred bucks.”

Logan barks out a laugh.  “Smart as they are, sometimes they’re both fucking idiots.  I’ll see his hundred at two months.”

 

 

“It doesn’t matter, that I’m younger than you thought I was?”  Charles asks over chess.

It’s the first time he’s voluntarily said anything to the effect of agreeing that he’s a minor.  As much as he doesn’t want something like that to bother Erik, it’s the only thing Charles has left to try to snap Erik out of this.

“Should it?” Erik returns, far too easily.  “Are you any less the person you were yesterday, just because of what’s written down on a piece of paper?”

Charles is well enough aware of how trivial Erik finds things like paperwork to be.  Minor or of age, Pet or otherwise, none of it seems to matter to Erik-- but then again, to Erik, it doesn’t have to.  It only has to matter when Erik wants it to, and Erik’s been anything but consistent.

“Stop it,”  he says quietly, because he has to.  “You don’t mean that.”

The whole room seems to cloud over, right along with Erik’s expression.  “What--”

“I’m a person when it suits you-- I have wants and desires when it suits you.”  Although he has all but given up on trying to figure out his next move, he doesn’t look up from the chess board.  “And when it doesn’t, I’m nothing more than a product of my upbringing.”

When Erik says nothing, the air around them feels suffocating.  It shouldn’t matter.  Even though he’s sure he’s rambling, just blathering on like some kind of idiot, he can’t seem to help himself-- and he wants to blame Erik for that, too.

“If you wanted someone perfectly attuned to your preferences, you should have left me as I was.”  He could have lied to Erik.  Could have made Erik believe Charles’d had some epiphany, break down crying and pour out stories about how Sebastian _mistreated_ him.  It probably would have been easy, if he hadn’t cared what Erik thinks of him.

What he’d done before, to get Erik on board with _letting_ Charles touch him, had been nothing compared to the performance he could put on for Erik.  Not that Erik would care in the slightest about the skill involved in that sort of thing.  Not that Erik would appreciate it.

He ignores the edge to Erik’s voice when he says, “What, would you have me treat you like Azazel does?”

“Azazel _respects_ me,” Charles snaps. Not for what he is, but how he does it-- a distinction Erik apparently can’t comprehend.

“By treating you like a possession?”

“By acting as though I have something to offer!”

The chessboard between them stands forgotten, immune to the heavy silence that follows.

“The way you look at me, the way you talk to me, sometimes--  it’s as if you don’t think I know how to want things for myself.”

“Charles--”

“If I didn’t want you, I’d be content with the levels of your affection.  If you weren’t desireable, I’d have been pleased by your indifference.”

“And yet, you would claim that you desired Sebastian Shaw?”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand; it’s terribly unbecoming,” Charles bites out before he pushes himself to his feet.  Without another glance in Erik’s direction, he leaves the room.

At the top of the stairs, Charles finds his feet at a choice: he can be alone, or he can make himself available to Erik.  If he retreats to the room given him upon his arrival, he doesn’t doubt Erik will leave him be.  But, despite the path his feet have taken, distance from Erik isn’t really what he wants.

Not that he really even knows what he wants, apart from the fact that he doesn’t want to talk about Shaw anymore.

 

 

Erik finds Charles in their bed.

His bed.

 _The_ bed.

Either Charles is asleep, or he’s faking it, which means he wants Erik to behave as though he’s asleep.  So Erik settles for taking brushing his teeth during a hasty shower, and donning pyjama bottoms before slipping into bed behind Charles.  He doesn’t hesitate at all before curling an arm around Charles’s middle; the pace of his breathing doesn’t seem slow or even enough for Charles to actually be asleep, but without knowing what it is he wants to hear, Erik figures he’s safest if he just keeps quiet.

Several minutes seem to tick by before Charles speaks.

“What I want from you, you’ve given, _so_ freely, to people you’ll never see again.  But not to me.  What you so readily give to _strangers_ \- to people who care nothing for you and for whom you couldn’t care less - you withhold from me,”  Charles says softly.

Is that how it seems, to Charles?  Erik doesn’t really want to flesh out the logic that leads Charles to that sort of perception.

“It’s easy to give something away, when you don’t care about who receives it,” he says, hoping it’s worded correctly.  But Charles stays silent.  And perfectly still.  Erik yields a harsh sigh against Charles’s shoulders.  “I’m trying to say that I care about _you_.”

Silence.

And then, with a faint sort of surprise that makes something in Erik’s chest ache, Charles just says, “... Oh.”

 _Oh_?  With as easy as Charles seems to think he’d be to manipulate, failing to notice something like that seems a bit glaring.

“Well, you really could have said so earlier, you know,” Charles adds, sounding more than a little put out.  


	45. Chapter 45

“I thought we’d go out to dinner,” Erik says, as if it isn’t totally out of the blue.

Even though Charles manages to abstain from narrowing his eyes, he gets the feeling the sentiment carries over, regardless.

“‘We,’ who?” he asks, as blandly as possible, returning Erik’s book to its shelf; despite Charles’s ambitions and his progress in calculus, topology still seems a little beyond him.

“You and me.   _We_.”

“You hate going out,” Charles hears himself say.  For as tactless as it is, he can’t keep the words in. It's possible that living with Erik is causing him to develop some sort of syndrome that prevents him from filtering what comes out of his mouth.

“I don’t _hate_ going out,” Erik tries to scoff.  “I don’t much care for parties, but I’m perfectly capable of enjoying a civilised meal.”

“By ‘civilised meal’ he means ‘a steak the size of your head!’” comes Angel’s voice from down the hall.

It’s followed by the sound of something in her bedroom tumbling to the floor.  More than that, it’s the veiled chagrin clinging to Erik’s features that has Charles smiling a little.

“It just seemed like a decent sort of compromise-- it’s not like I’m some kind of recluse,” Erik insists.  He’s all but grumbling by the time he adds, “Most people just annoy me.”

That, Charles can’t argue with.  Really, it shouldn’t be quite so surprising, but Charles had never bothered to consider what it might mean, that Erik doesn’t find spending time with him annoying.  Frustrating, sometimes, but Charles finds Erik frustrating, too.

So maybe that’s fair.

“So where are we going?” he asks, unabashedly curious.

“Well,” Erik hems, glancing towards the door of his upstairs office, “there _is_ this steak house--”

“Told you!”

“Angel, if you would like to join the conversation come out of your damned room!” Erik yells back at her, and Charles has to bite into his lower lip to keep a laugh in check.  Composing himself, Erik looks back to Charles to more sedately say, “But they have a nice mushroom ravioli.  I hear.”

“I do like mushrooms,” he concedes, losing the battle against the grin tugging at his lips.

“Yes, I know, I watched you eat at least a dozen of those little mushroom-puff-things at Babish’s party,” Erik says, with a edge that only has Charles’s smile deepening.

Nevertheless, Charles crosses his arms over his chest.  “Entirely worth it-- they were delicious.”

“So that’s a yes to dinner, then?” Erik presses, some of his casual air going a little stiff.

Charles is all too certain that if he says no, then they’ll stay in.  And if it weren’t for the fact that he's never been out to dinner with Erik, with just the two of them, it’d be harder to pull his thoughts from the idea of, say, an evening of take away Thai food and making fun of the television.

“Yes, to dinner,” he says, smiling more than he thinks he ought.

 

 

Getting dressed for dinner is been more difficult than Charles had expected it to be.  Asking Erik for some sort of input would be useless; he’d just tell Charles to wear whatever he wants.  Normally, he’d ask Angel, but she’s shut herself up in the bathroom for reasons unknown.

Sometimes, with Angel, it’s best not to ask.

Charles knows what he likes, but the trouble is that he likes lots of things.  What he likes best are clothes than draw Erik’s gaze without calling too much attention; it would be easier, of course, if Erik would simply voice some sort of preference, but Charles has given up holding his breath on that front.

Everything Charles pulls out of his closet, he second-guesses.  And Caesar’s no help.  At the very least, Charles consoles himself with the fact that he hasn’t resorted to asking the dog for fashion advice.

His hand is reaching for the phone to call the restaurant for some sort of guidance as to what wouldn’t be out of place when a deviant little thought drifts through his mind.

Charles stares down at his phone.

It’s a ridiculous, trivial reason to call her.  He can’t even predict how Erik would feel about it.  But she had said to call, if he ever needed anything.

“Hello?”

Charles startles a little, unable to remember dialing the number, let alone lifting the phone to his ear.  If nothing else, he recovers quickly.  “Oh.  Yes, hello, Mrs. Le--”

 _“Charles_.”  How do women do that?  Manage to sound both expectant and warning in so few syllables?

“Edie,”  he corrects himself.

Before he can say anything else, she takes the reins of the conversation.  “Much better.  Now, how are you?  I’ve been expecting you to call for weeks now-- you understand that I start to worry if I don’t hear from people every so often, don’t you?”

Although she sounds perfectly serious, she doesn’t really sound angry.  Just-- actually, Charles doesn’t really have a word for it, but it makes him smile, anyway.

“I’ll do better to remember that,” he pledges.  “And I’m well, I just... I was wondering if I could ask you for a bit of input.”

 

 

“I can’t remember ever seeing her like that before,”  Charles says, excavating his salad, trying to find another slice of cucumber.

Angel’s vain in a feigned sort of way; it had been strange for her to spend so much of the day primping over what she had claimed was nothing at all.

Erik, who seems more interested in watching Charles eat than so much as acknowledging his own salad, shrugs.  “She’s got company coming over.”

The answer is so bland that it takes a moment for Charles to tease out what Erik means.

“Really?  Who?”

“Trust me, Charles-- sometimes it’s just best not to ask questions,” Erik cautions with a small smirk.  “Especially when it comes to Angel and... company.”

Easier said than done, in this instance.

“So, you don’t mind, that someone else is in your home?”  Charles means it to be a little teasing, but the reality of the situation catches up with him before Erik can answer.  “Wait, is that why we’re--”

“No,” Erik says quickly, but Charles is already putting down his fork.  “I mentioned wanting to go to dinner, and Angel then invited someone over.  Not the other way ‘round.”

It’s a little disappointing, that his concerns are so transparent.  It could just be that Erik’s getting more perceptive.

“Is this something she does often?” he asks.  Angel’s certainly never mentioned anything of the sort before.

Erik’s answer is interrupted by the waiter clearing away their forgotten salads.  Well, forgotten in Charles’s case; Erik’s was simply neglected from the start.

“Not really,” Erik says, once their relative privacy is restored.  “But if she wanted to do it more, she’d say so; and if she said so, I could find some way to occupy myself for an evening.”

“I don’t know that you can count working as ‘occupying yourself,’” Charles can’t help saying, earning a pointed glance from Erik.  As if it’s Charles’s fault that he’s predictable.  Charles’s smile sharpens just a little.  “So, would you be as accommodating if _I_ wanted to have someone--”

The look on Eriks face shuts him up and makes it feel as though his stomach is about to bottom out.  He’d only meant to try to get a rise out of Erik, but he’d clearly gone entirely too far.  It’s not the sort of thing to be joked about and he, of all people, should know better.

“I’m sorry, I--”

“No,” Erik says, more calmly than Charles knows what to do with.  “Stop, just.  Just don’t say anything for a moment.”

Charles’s teeth catch the inside of his cheek.  He just watches as Erik sets his forearm across the small table, his open hand palm up between them.  Immediately, Charles places his own hand in Erik’s grasp.  The brush of Erik’s thumb over the ridge of his knuckles makes the floor feel a little more solid under Charles’s feet.

With his free hand, Erik takes a sip of his drink before looking back to Charles.  That dreadful tangle of emotions is no longer present in Erik’s gaze, and his tone has found a more conversational range when he speaks again.  “I would never keep you from pursuing something, or someone, you wanted.”

Oh, good god, what the hell has he done.

“But that would be an either/or situation.  You’re free to end things between us; I won’t punish you for it and I won’t sell you because of it.  But if you’re with me, then you’re with _me_.  If you want to be in someone else’s bed, then you shouldn’t be in mine.”

Some part of Charles wants to laugh over the idea that Erik had taken the words the least bit seriously.  But with Erik looking at him, waiting for him to say something, there doesn’t really seem to be anything funny about it.

“And am I to expect the same... singular focus?”  After all, just because Erik hasn’t brought anyone else home doesn’t mean there haven’t been others-- Erik’s gone from the apartment for hours, and sometimes work takes him out of the building.  It’s not as though Charles would have any real way of knowing.

“Of course,” Erik says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

Charles wants to argue, just on the grounds of practicality; he’d be able to understand Erik maintaining a relationship with someone else for appearance’s sake.  A fixated interest on a Pet isn’t publicly regarded as a good thing, but then again, it’s not as though Erik really seems to care about his public image.

“Charles, there isn’t anybody else,” Erik insists.  “There hasn’t been, not since...”

The waiter’s interruption with their main courses is almost welcome, even if the young man looks like he’s mentally berating himself for the intrusion.  Erik’s glare doesn’t much help matters, so Charles makes a point to say thank you, even though it doesn’t seem to soothe their waiter’s anxiety.

The first few bites of Erik’s steak and Charles’s ravioli are consumed quietly, but something Edie had said starts cropping up in his thoughts.

“Is this a date?” he finally asks.

Erik looks at him as though he’s sprouted a second head.  “Yes.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’?  Charles, I asked you out to dinner.”

“We have dinner together all-- all the--”  But he can’t even finish, not with the way Erik is practically laughing, he’s grinning so much.  Fighting back his own, far more embarrassed, grin, he mutters, “Shut up.”

Dutifully, Erik returns to the meal at hand, even if his smile barely fades.

“I was joking before,” Charles says, because he doesn’t want Erik to think he’d been serious.  “Before, about... entertaining.”

And that manages to wipe the smugness off of Erik’s face.  “Oh.”

“Yes,” Charles says, triumphantly spearing a bit of pasta with his fork.  “‘ _Oh_.’”

One corner of Erik’s mouth start sneaking its way upwards.  “Shut up.”


	46. Chapter 46

“Honestly, Erik-- what are you doing to that poor boy?”

How the hell is this suddenly _his_ fault?

“I took him out to dinner,” he huffs into the phone.

“How can this be the first time?” his mother presses.  “He’s been with you for months!”

“People recognise him!”  He regrets raising his voice, even as he does it, but there’s nothing for it.  “I don’t want to parade him around in public like some sort of spectacle-- every time I take him someplace, we run into someone who knows him, and they never shut up about how I keep him ‘ _locked up here_.’”

As if Charles is some kind of maiden, trapped in a tower.  

“Well that’s hardly any of their business.”

“Exactly.”  Wait.  No, it’s annoying-- _that’s_ what’s wrong with it.  “Anyway.  That’s really all he called you about?  What to wear to dinner?”

“Erik, my dear, that’s none of your business.”  He wants to bang his head against his desk.  “But would it kill you to tell him he looks nice from time to time?”

He has to pull the phone away from his ear in order to sigh in peace.  Bringing it back within range, he says, “It was hard enough to get him to pick out clothes for himself in the first place.  I don’t want to tell him what to wear.”

“You really think he’s only going to wear whatever you say you like?”

“ _Yes_.”  It’s really not all that absurd, but knowing that would require more exposure to Charles than a couple of phone calls could provide.

“I’m sure it’s harmless,”  she says, and he can just picture her, standing in her kitchen with both hands on her hips, phone trapped between her cheek and her shoulder.  “When you come to visit me, you don’t only pack things you know I like.”

“But I _do_ pack things you like--”

“And you wear them for _special occasions_ ,” she cuts in, and as much as he wants to say that there’s nothing special about them eating dinner, he can’t quite manage to wrap his tongue around the words.  “It’s not like he’s calling me every morning for instructions on how to dress.  You took him out to dinner.  He wanted to look nice-- he wanted _you_ to think he looked nice.”

When she says it like that, it sounds perfectly normal.  But it’s not as though he’s told her all the details of Charles’s first morning there - normalcy and Charles have a funny relationship - and he certainly has no intention of telling her now.  So instead, he says, “He did look nice.”

“Did you bother to tell him that?”

Haven’t they just been over how he doesn’t want to unduly influence Charles choices?

Her sigh is audible.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an update-- developed a nasty ear infection, but the antibiotics finally seem to be doing the trick. A quickie here, and hopefully a more buxom update tomorrow!

“He hates these things,” Angel says, half a second before Erik is saying, “I hate these things.” 

“It’s a _conference_ ,” Charles can’t help almost-laughing.  They keep talking about it like it’s the end of the world-- or rather, they keep talking as if Erik thinks it is.

_Hates them_ , Angel mouths while Erik pours himself another cup of coffee.

Despite his best efforts, Charles’s brow pops and he mouths back, _Why?_

Even though there’s no way Erik could have seen the exchange - he hasn’t even looked up from stirring in his sugar - he manages to answer:  “They’re tedious, the presentations are inane, and half the people there are always trying find ways to slip their resumes into the conversation.  And staying at the hotel only makes it worse.”

“You have to stay at the hotel,” Angel is quick to insist.

“Why?  It’s a ten minute drive.”  Erik apparently assumes there won’t be any traffic.  In Manhattan.

Angel’s hands find her hips; a dangerous sign, Charles has learned.  “It’s not about the drive, it’s about being there, with your team.  They like having special-boss-time.”

It’s Erik’s reflexive frown that makes Charles wish she hadn’t put it like that; she has a point, but there are better ways to phrase these things for Erik.  Regardless of whether or not they’re staying in the same hotel, Charles seriously doubts Erik’s employees will be getting much meaningful time with him  “And it’s about letting the staff staying here know that you trust them.”

And now, on top of the frown, Erik’s brow is furrowed as he looks over to Charles.  “I _do_  trust them.”

“Then spend a few days away, just because, without coming home to check up on them.  It’s different from going out of town-- when you leave New York, you _have_ to trust them.  Leave them to their own devices just because you _can_.”

Charles can hear Erik’s sigh coming from a mile away, but Angel shoots him a small smile when it arrives.

“I _hate_  conferences," Erik mutters, resigned.

Once more, Charles finds himself smiling a little.  “You hate everything.”

Almost everything.  And Charles can’t even bring himself to care much at all about the way Erik’s knee-jerk aversion to so many things and people lends such significance to the fact that Erik likes having him around; if Erik didn’t truly like it, Charles is all too sure he’d know about it.

“I do not hate _everything_.”

This time, it’s Charles who darts a glance in Angel’s direction.  And this time, Erik catches it.

“Fine,” he announces.  Charles doesn’t shy from Erik’s fixed gaze.  “Then you get to come with me.  If I’ve got to suffer through this for no good reason, someone else should, too.”

It’s really quite ridiculous, that Erik seems to think Charles will view spending a week in a hotel with him as some sort of burden.


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have survived my weekend in Boston! At least I was a tiny bit productive on the trip home?

“No,” Erik says brusquely, putting a hand on Charles’s shoulder, keeping him from following the signs that might direct them towards conference registration.

Although Charles yields to the course Erik plots through the bustling lobby, he looks decidedly unimpressed.  Angel, obviously, is an awful influence on Charles.  Erik will have to do something about that, just as soon as he can figure out what the hell that ought to be.

“Check-in first, then that nonsense,” he clarifies-- even if the idea of just holing up in the room with Charles sounds like a much better use of time.

The answer seems to mollify Charles, however, so he doesn’t push it.  Next year, he’s just going to schedule a vacation during the week of the conference.  It’s hard to imagine Charles objecting to that; Erik has gotten the impression that Charles is only so keen on Erik going to this one because he hadn’t come up with a reason not to.

With every passing moment Erik spends contemplating a proper vacation, the better of an idea it sounds.  Some places in New York, Charles attracts attention because of who he is - or who he was _with_ , Erik does his best to ignore - and here, Charles will be the center of some people’s attention as a means to get to him.  There’s a comparison there that Erik doesn’t want to mull over.

At the very least, as he watches Charles politely breeze through check-in at the front desk, Erik is able to remember that Charles can be remarkably good with people.

 

 

While Erik sees to the porter, Charles occupies himself with taking in the view.  All things considered, it’s a somewhat unremarkable view of mostly just more windows, but the change of scene is nice, regardless.

“We have a nicer view at home,” Erik says, his voice close enough to startle Charles just a little.

He doesn’t bother checking to make sure they’re alone.  “Home doesn’t have room service.”

Whatever half-baked comment is churning itself into being in Erik’s mind - no doubt an attempt to compare Angel to room service, in some deranged capacity - is nipped in the bud with an arch of Charles’s brow as he turns from the window.

Erik’s hands have a habit of finding Charles with a stealth that leaves Charles wondering how they got to his shoulders; it’s a familiar enough phenomenon for Charles not to find it terribly distracting.  No, far more pressing is the way Erik’s gaze flickers down to the collar around Charles’s neck.

“I’ll have to wear it more often this week,” he mentions, just in case that detail had slipped Erik’s mind.  “But you can take it off, if you like.”

That frustrating shadow shifts behind Erik’s eyes, but for a moment, there’s just silence.  It’s unexpectedly mild, the way Erik says, “You like having it on.”  

It doesn’t even sound as though he’s internally tacking on the, ‘ _even though I think that’s absurd_ ’,  that goes unspoken whenever Erik tries to rein himself in.

Charles tries not to smile too broadly as he steps in closer and pushes Erik’s hand up to the skin-warm metal.  “And if I were completely inconsiderate, I suppose that means I’d never take it off--”

“Really?”

How Erik manages to say such things, so earnestly, captivates something in Charles.  “It doesn’t mean to me, what it means to you.”

Even though he can see the desire to turn this into a ‘discussion’ rising in Erik, it seems to be the wrong time to attempt some humorous comparison, to Angel walking around the penthouse in her underwear, or something.  

“I like that _you_ like taking it off me,” Charles says, opting for a smirk rather than a sigh.  He does, in fact, much prefer that Erik takes off his collar simply because he doesn’t care for collars; it spares Charles concern that he’s done something wrong.

Erik just looks at him, and Charles can’t tell if he’s going to let the matter slide.  With a tilt of his head, Charles invites Erik to take it off again.  As Erik’s hands lift to curl his fingers around Charles’s collar, he can’t help marvelling over how much more effective wordless communication can be.  Especially with Erik.

The thought slips away, however, when he realises Erik hasn’t removed his collar yet-- he’s not even trying.  He’s just smoothing the pads of his fingertips along the band of skin hidden by the collar.  Of course, it’s not that Erik doesn’t touch his neck, but Erik’s never done it quite like this before.  

Charles isn’t even aware of how unsteady his legs are until Erik slips an arm around him.

With his pulse hammering so loud in his head, he’s sure Erik can hear it, too, when he nudges the collar up Charles’s neck-- when he scrapes his teeth against the exposed skin.  Relief breezes through Charles’s mind; it doesn’t matter that he can’t figure out what he’s supposed to be doing, because he isn’t even sure he could manage it at the moment, not with the way the sum of his perceptions has collapsed down to the feel of Erik’s mouth at his neck.

Even his attempts to sort out Erik’s response taper off into a gauzy apathy, just so long as Erik doesn’t stop; his hands find their way to Erik’s hair, in an attempt to say as much.  And when Erik pulls Charles closer, when he puts a bit of bite and force into his too-light attentions, Charles tugs at his hair, which usually is enough to encourage Erik to keep on.

For all intents and purposes, it seems that Erik is set on ignoring the tension along his scalp.

Charles tugs harder, but Erik’s lips go back to ghosting against his skin.  He doesn’t bother concealing the edge of want in his tone as he grumbles nonsense in Erik’s direction.  For Erik’s part, he only muffles an amused sound in Charles’s hair, metal once more falling in the way along his neck.

He’s close to squirming against Erik, vexed by how much they’re both wearing, the fact that they’re still standing instead of being sprawled out along the bed, or the floor, or the wall, _anywhere_ , for the love of--

Charles’s hands mutiny, yanking the collar open himself so that Erik can get at the rest of his neck, even though when he brings their bodies back together, he catches Erik’s lips with his own.  Finally, Erik kisses him how he wants to be kissed, and his hands take to minding Charles’s bare neck.

The effect is no less dizzying.  There’s no reason it should feel so illicit.  

Trading nipping kisses, they manage to find the bed, their limbs bumping and tangling as they try to simultaneously undress each other and themselves.  They get as far as dispensing with socks, Charles’s shirt and Erik’s belt before the phone rings.

It takes two rings for Charles to notice.  Pressing a hand to Erik’s chest, he tries to catch his breath, and tries to resist the desire to just unplug the phone from the wall.

“Let it ring,” Erik decides, voice rough in a way that only makes Charles want to agree, as he rolls himself onto Charles.

Well.  One of them ought to be responsible.  With an all too sincere groan, Charles pushes himself up the bed until he can reach the phone.

“Erik Lehnsherr’s--”  his voice cuts out as Erik palms his cock through his trousers.  Charles shoots him an accusing glance, and Erik just smirks himself as he starts in on the button and zipper.  Adopting as indifferent a demeanour as he can, Charles says - perfectly evenly - into the phone:  “Excuse me.  Erik Lehnsherr’s room.  May I help you?”

He manages to spare at least some of his attention for the vaguely familiar voice on the other end of the line, even if Erik mouthing along the base of his erection with nothing but a thin barrier of cotton keeping skin from skin is infinitely more interesting.

“No, I’m sure he’s planning to attend,” Charles says.  Erik goes still, narrowed eyes flicking up to meet Charles’s gaze; the clarity there fades for only a moment, until Charles says, “Absolutely.  He’s handling a personal matter at the moment, but once that’s wrapped up, he’ll be on his way down.”

Erik glares all the more, as if he thinks Charles is intentionally being suggestive.  Or maybe it’s just that he really doesn’t want to go the conference welcome/meet-and-greet.

“No trouble at all,”  Charles says to the slew of gratitude and apologies suddenly spilling into his ear.

By time he gets the phone settled back into its cradle, Erik is.... well, it’s not really pouting.  Charles doesn’t think Erik’s mouth is physically capable of pouting, but he certainly looks very put out.  But petulantly so.  It’s a combination that leaves Charles fighting a smile.

“I promised Angel I’d do what I could to see that you attended some of those social things,” he says in his own defence, admirably maintaining his composure.

“I’m certain you’d enjoy it more if I stayed.”  Erik’s voice sounds like silk as he starts to drag down Charles’s trousers and shorts together.

Charles quickly pushes Erik’s hands aside - because if things go much further, he’s going to forget why it’s important to not break promises to Angel - and pulls Erik up on top of him again.  He isn’t sure it’s not worse, with the length of Erik’s cock like granite against his hip.

No.  Focus.

“So would you,” he counters, rocking his hip upwards, if only to drive home the point that Erik’s motives are hardly so exclusively altruistic.  “Don’t you think I’d be able to come up with some suitable reward for good behaviour?”

A corner of Erik’s mouth lifts, however briefly.  “So that’s your plan?”  His hands find Charles’s hips, pinning him down to the bed.  Charles groans when he rocks their hips perfectly together, pressing his arousal flush against Charles’s.  “Do you really think it’s a good idea to send me down there to shake people’s hands when there is somewhere else, specifically, that I would much rather be?”

Erik doesn’t stop.  His hips have found a perfectly tortuous rhythm, and all Charles can do is shrug, and try not to moan as he says, “Can only play the hand I’ve got.”

For some reason, that seizes Erik’s attention.  Their faces are abruptly more close together and now it’s Charles’s wrists pinned to the bed.

“Speaking of your hands,” he purrs into Charles’s ear.  “If I’m not getting off, neither are you.”

There’s no doubt in Charles’s mind that Erik had felt the way his cock throbbed at the words.  It’s not an order, per se.  But it skirts a line that has Charles’s nerves buzzing in an addictive sort of way.  He's sure Erik doesn't want the instruction acknowledged.  After all, it's not a grave matter.  It's a game.  Of sorts.  Or maybe Erik thinks they're bartering.

With a mostly straight face Charles says, “Don’t go.  Forget the welcome thing.  Stay here with me.”

Erik chuckles and Charles grins.  Pushing himself up off of Charles, Erik shakes his head.  “You’re a bit spoiled, you know that?"

“Well whose fault is that?”  Charles returns smugly.

Instead of the retort he’s expecting, Erik just looks at him with a warmth he doesn’t know how to decipher.  He does, however, decide he rather likes it.  It doesn’t come out nearly as teasing as he intends when he says, “Now hurry up and leave so you can duck out early without seeming antisocial.”

Erik is back to grumbling as he heads for the bathroom.  For his own part, Charles takes a few deep breaths to try to get the blood in his body a bit better distributed so that he doesn’t topple right over the moment he stands up.

While Erik grabs a quick - and Charles assumes cold - shower, he sets himself to the task of picking out a non-rumpled shirt and a new tie for Erik to wear downstairs.  He’s less than halfway to Erik’s hanging bag when he passes the open halves of his collar, just laying there on the floor.

It takes him a few moments to recall how they got there.

Charles scoops up the halves and tosses them onto the bed before setting back to the task at hand.


	49. Chapter 49

They don’t make it to dinner that night.

Erik insists it’s no great loss.

 

 

By lunch the next morning, Erik is almost transparently happy to see Charles for lunch.  Or at least, Charles likes to think that’s why he all but leashes Charles to his side.

“Would you like dessert?  I believe they have key lime pie,” Charles offers, loosely folding his napkin as it sits in his lap.

“No, thank you,” Erik says.  But when Charles moves to stand, Erik’s surprise makes it obvious that he thinks Charles had only offered out of some sort of reflex, rather than the fact that he’d wanted dessert for himself and was simply being polite.  “Oh.  Fine.  Don’t be long.”

Ah.

Charles settles back into his seat and leans in close enough to both ensnare Erik’s attention and make sure they aren’t overheard.  “Should I take that to mean that you’d prefer I didn’t say hello to people I know on the way to or from?”

Again, surprise.  Charles glances over to a handful of Pets congregating near the samovar.

“Oh.”

Charles gives Erik a roll of his eyes masquerading as a smile.  Only a few people attending the conference have brought personal Pets - mostly company owners and the like - making the majority of the Pets present professional Pets.  Oddly enough, these are the sort with which Charles is most familiar: the personal assistants and the administrative assistants to the powerful or corporately endowed.  Since leaving School, his path has rarely crossed that of another Pet, excepting certain sorts of parties.

“Don’t be _too_ long,” Erik amends.  “You can’t leave me alone with these people.”

To hear him talk about it, you’d think there was torture involved in the sessions that fill up the time between meals.

 

 

Sinking further into the hot tub, Erik mumbles out, all in one breath: “I didn’t even pack a cozzy, how on earth did you find one?”

Charles just chuckles.  It’s no wonder Erik thought these sorts of things were so miserable, if he’d never bothered to avail himself of the hotel’s accommodations.  There’s really something unhealthy about how rarely Erik indulges himself.

“Concierge service in hotels like this are very reliable,” he shrugs.

“But you picked them out,” Erik guesses, cracking one of his closed eyes in Charles’s direction.

There’s nothing more than an affirmative humming sound needed, in Charles’s opinion.  And Erik doesn’t press for confirmation.  Charles opts for a change of subject from his shopping ability, and pulls one of Erik’s feet into his lap.

As soon as his thumbs go to work along Erik’s instep, towards the ball of his right foot, Erik lets out a guttural sort of sound-- followed, no less, by a low, “Fuck, Charles.”

Given the way people ambling around the pool look over, Charles is at least reassured that he’s not the only one who thinks it’s a little over-the-top for public.  He shouldn’t find it as endearing as he does, but Charles can’t entirely stamp out his own small smile as he cides, “ _Erik_.”

He regrets saying anything, though, when Erik’s eyes snap open and he looks around.

Erik tries to pull his leg back, but Charles holds fast to his ankle.  “It’s fine,” he says, his voice soft but even.  “It’s good for my ego, knowing I can make you forget where you are for a moment.”

Charles thinks he sees a degree of understanding there, as Erik holds his gaze.  At the very least, Charles hopes it’s understanding, hopes Erik realises that it’s simply a matter of Charles wanting to curb things _before_ they get embarrassing-- but either way, Erik lets Charles retain his foot and lets his eyes drift shut once more.

 

 

The waitstaff is making their way around the conference ballroom, collecting breakfast dishes and trying to clear things out of the way before the headline speaker is introduced.

“You could stay, you know,” Erik mentions, once he’s sure his coffee is safe from confiscation.

Plenty of other Pets stay, though they’re clearly the corporate sort.  And it’s not that Erik wants Charles to sit around taking notes, he just doesn’t want Charles to feel... dismissed.

But the quirk of Charles’s mouth is more amused than anything else.  “I think I’ll leave you to it-- and I think I’ll be going for a swim.”

Erik isn’t even sure if he’s serious, or if Charles just wants to conjure the image of him those shorts that wouldn’t be out of place in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, had Rocky been more prone to navy than gold.  Then again, that had probably had more to do with Frank N. Furter’s preferences than Rocky’s.

Point to Charles, Erik concedes, because all he’s thinking about is Charles in the swimming costume.  “Tease,” he accuses lightly.

“Never,” is Charles’s too certain return.

As Charles strolls off, Erik has to suppose that that’s two points to Charles.

 

 

“Mr. Lehnsherr?”

The quiet voice so close to his ear causes Erik to flinch as he rouses from his lecture-induce stupor.  Turning his head, he discovers someone who has to be hotel staff, but higher up enough that he doesn’t look like the sort to be waiting tables, even if he is wearing a collar.

“Yes?” he returns, just as expectantly.  He even manages to scrape together a bit of hope that maybe there’s something wrong with his credit card, if only for the excuse to duck out of the droning on about urban planning.

“We are under the impression that a Charles Xavier is a Pet in your custody, and we’ll be needing your attention.”

 

 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Erik hears as he comes thundering around the corner, terrified concierge in tow, the words bouncing around with a bit of echo.

“‘ _Fine_ ’?” he snaps, if only because there’s no conceivable way for Charles to be _fine_ after some hotel lackey has gone through the trouble of spilling out words like ‘ _assault_ ’ and ‘ _police report_.’

“Fine,” Charles insists, from the middle of the cloud of hotel Pets.  At least, they all seem like Pets, with how they’re hovering over Charles as he sits on the stone bench near the edge of the pool.

Erik takes a moment to glance over him-- no bruises, no welts.  But who the hell knows what the towel draped over his shoulders is hiding.  The hurried scrutiny is enough for Charles to tighten his grasp of the towel, which is when Erik notices that Charles isn’t wearing his collar.  It’s enough to distract from the yelp of pain he hears in the distance.

“What happened?”  The question is addressed strictly to Charles.

“I went for a swim,” Charles says, as if it’s all taxingly simple.  “Someone thought that my being by myself served as some kind of excuse to put his hands on me.”

The world is suddenly dripping with red, but when Erik looks over to the other side of the pool, all he can see is a man with his wrist being carefully bound by medics, despite his dramatics.

Erik blinks.

When he looks back to Charles, he seems too wide-eyed and innocent to be responsible.

“I wasn’t about to let him touch me just because he wanted to,” Charles says, indignant, totally destroying that delusion.  Imagining Charles hurting anyone proves somewhat impossible, but to Erik’s confusion, all Charles supplies is:  “What?  It’s not like anyone who wants to can touch me however they please without consequence.”

Erik looks back across the pool.  Whoever the idiot was, his wrist seems to be broken.

Had Charles done that?  Surely not.  It doesn’t even--

“I already told them that my collar’s made of metal, which is why I wasn’t wearing it in the pool, obviously.”  For all Charles’s cavalier tone, the pleading glance he steals in Erik’s direction is impossible to miss.

“If I went to the trouble of getting it custom-made, I’d be rather annoyed if it turned up rusty,” Erik hears himself supply.

The Pets around Charles nod and murmur a sort of understanding that leaves Erik feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, but he tells himself it’s better than the alternative.  And the gratitude that lights Charles’s eyes helps, of course.

Rising from the bench and emerging from his protective cluster of other Pets, Charles says, “You’ll need to sign the report.”

All Erik can do is stare at Charles, trying to figure out where someone else had touched him.  It has to be better than yanking the towel off of Charles and inspecting him.  In public.

“ _Erik_ ,” Charles tries again, snapping him back to an awareness of the world.

He takes the clipboard proffered by some Pet, scribbles a signature, and then hands it back.

“You’re all right?” he presses, drawing in closer.

The way his voice has gone ragged, for some reason, summons a smile from Charles.

“Perfectly fine.” Erik doesn’t know how Charles can say that with such conviction, but when Charles tangles their fingers together, it’s easier to keep quiet. “Can we just go back to the room?”


	50. Chapter 50

“You broke his wrist.”  It is, perhaps, the fifth time Erik has said so, but no matter how much he says it aloud, it never really sinks in.  He can’t even picture it in his head.

The preamble, however-- the notion of someone _grabbing_ at Charles, is all too easy to imagine.  But what to do with his triggered temper, Erik has no idea, seeing as to how the man’s wrist is already broken.  By Charles.  Apparently.

“He touched me,” Charles insists, sounding flustered.  Or defensive. With Charles, the two tones share a fair bit of overlap.  “It doesn’t even matter that I wasn’t wearing a collar, he _knew_ I was a Pet, and I told him not to do anything stupid.”

By this point, Charles has all but tucked himself into a far corner of the elevator.

“Charles.  Do you think I’m upset with you because you gave some jackass what he most certainly had coming?”

Before Charles can say anything else, a ping fills the air and the elevator doors slide open.

 

 

Charles has spent entirely too much time in the shower.  As much as Erk understands the appeal of rinsing off chlorine, he can’t help suspecting that Charles is either avoiding him, or trying to avoid everything.  If either reason didn’t have worrisome implications, it would be easier to tolerate.

For a while, Erik hates the whole hotel room-- from the tasteful wallpaper to the dove gray carpet to the the crisp white bedding and all the brushed steel accents.  It’s too neat, too clean, too consciously coordinated and designed for him to feel comfortable.   When he runs his bare foot across the carpet, it’s too thick.  The bed he’s sitting on is too firm.  And the desk in the corner is too small.  Somehow, the whole room seems to match the muted city twilight that filters in through the windows, and that’s irritating, too.

More than anything else, though, he hates the solidity of the door that separates the bedroom from the bathroom.

And yet, for all his waiting, hen Charles finally emerges, towel slung around his hips, Erik doesn’t even get a chance to think before his mouth opens.  

“Where did he touch you?”  Even though he hadn’t meant to say it aloud, he doesn’t balk when Charles’s gaze meets his own.  He can’t even blame himself; for the better part of an hour, it’s the question that's dominated his thoughts.

From where he sits on the hotel bed, he can’t untangle whatever it is that’s going on behind Charles’s eyes-- though Charles moving closer does nothing to help.

“Why?” Charles asks quietly, when he’s standing close enough for Erik to touch.  “What does it matter?”

“It must have been significant, if you broke his wrist for it.”  Another matter they ought to get around to addressing.

For a moment, Charles just looks at him, as he can see right through Erik’s skin.  Somehow, it leaves him feeling infinitely more exposed than Angel’s most critical examination. There's an openness to Charles's gaze that manages to penetrate deeper than even his mother's reserved appraisal.

When Charles reaches out to take hold of his wrist, Erik doesn’t resist.  He just lets Charles guide his grasp to Charles’s hip.

“Here,” he says, after Erik settles his hand comfortably against Charles’s skin.  “He was standing behind me, and he put his hand here.”  Without even being able to really feel it, Erik watches his fingertips dig into his hold of Charles’s flesh.  “And he put a hand on my arm,” Charles adds, tilting his head towards his right shoulder.  “And then he tried to touch my neck.”

There’s a finality to it that Erik can only take for a final straw.  Musings on snapping the man’s neck must have slipped from his mind and past his lips, because Charles chuckles.

“It was a proportional response.”  From Charles, the sentiment is almost too much.  No, it is too much, because Erik has to laugh or he doesn’t know what else there is to do.  “I don’t understand why you’re so baffled.”

And that-- _that_ ’s too much.

“Where did you even learn how to do that?”

“I know how to protect myself.”  Charles sounds practically insulted.

“How is that even possible?”

Finally, a proper bit of confusion settles over Charles.  “That-- it’s something any Pet ought to know how to do.”  As if breaking someone’s wrist is somehow akin to tying one’s shoes.

“Most Pets don’t.”

“Why not?”  Although it looks as though Charles is about to add more, only silence follows.

“Most owners don’t like the idea of a Pet who knows how to defend himself.”

“Then ‘most owners’ are idiots.”

“You could hurt me.”

The mere suggestion has Charles trying to back away.  “What?”  

But Erik holds fast to him, adding his other hand to the other side of Charles’s hips.  “If you wanted to.  You could hurt me-- you could stop me from touching you.”

“I wouldn’t--”

“But you could.”

Jaw tightening in what must be frustration, Charles looks away.  “You have a marked physical advantage-- I’d have to seriously hurt you if I wanted to have any chance at success.”

“But you could,” Erik presses, “hurt me.  You could stop me.”

When Charles looks back to him, the wreck of his emotions wears too transparently on his face.  It tears its way under Erik’s skin, that he could be the cause of that much distress.

Though Charles’s lips are parted, he says nothing, and Erik can’t top himself from asking, “What?”

There’s something tragic in the curve of Charles’s lips.  “I can’t quite escape how happy I suspect you’d be, if I told you I wanted to hurt you.”

“No, not _want_ \--”

“I wouldn’t,”  Charles huffs.  “I don’t want to-- I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to hurt me--”

And fuck but if that doesn’t feel as though he’s been slapped along the back of the head.  “Sorry?”

“You know what I mean-- I don’t want you to _really_ hurt me.”

The fact that their faces are suddenly much closer together is the only indication Erik has that he’s risen to his feet. The solid warmth of Charles's lean shoulders presses resolutely again his palms. Strange, that he'd never really noticed the muscle along Charles's limbs before-- or rather, that he'd never considered that muscle anything more than decorative.  “Say that again,” he all but commands.

Charles’s brow shows a quick flicker of confusion; Erik watches him push aside his apprehension, but it’s no less uncertain when Charles says, “I don’t want you to hurt me.”

It’s not enough - not when Charles sounds as if he's _guessing_ \- but Erik doesn’t know how to ask for more, and demanding more seems as though it would defeat the purpose.

But then comes Charles’s voice again-- even, and even assertive:  “Don’t hurt me.”

Sense and reason insist that he just leave well the hell enough alone, echoing in his head with voices that sound like a mix of both Angel and his mother, but Erik pushes the lot of it aside to ask, “Why not?”

He can see Charles trying to figure it out, can see him scrolling through a myriad of possible answers-- but there is no right answer for this.

When Charles answers, it’s soft enough for secrets.  “I wouldn’t know how to trust you anymore.”

Erik doesn’t even know why he’s surprised.  Charles has a knack for being painfully candid when properly prompted.  But the truth of Charles’s answer isn’t limited to Pets.  It can’t be.  And there’s a sheen of reflection in the answer that leaves Erik feeling vulnerable.

As if he's trying to hold onto this, onto Charles, and onto Charles-like-this, Erik’s hands frame Charles's face.  He watches as Charles tips one cheek more firmly into his touch.  “I want you to be able to trust me.”

“You give me plenty of reasons to,” Charles murmurs, his eyes drifting closed. They stay shut, as if the world outside his head is just a little too much to bear right now.

The words lack the sort of conviction Erik is used to hearing on Charles’s tongue.  Somehow, it makes them easier to believe.  It’s no secret between them, that he hides things from Charles, so maybe it’s the answer he deserves.  It’s just that Erik hadn’t expected the reality of it to inspire such an ache in his chest.

A reckless desire clamps itself around Erik's mind. It’s dizzying, how badly he wants to tell Charles everything, but he can’t get himself over the hurdle of the selfishness involved in it; his secrets aren’t his alone.

“I’m sorry,” he finds himself mumbling against Charles’s lips.  As much as he wants to give to Charles, he doesn’t want to heap burdens upon his shoulders-- and just that quickly, it seems so stupid, so trivial, the way he’s been trying to hold himself back, the way he’s been punishing both himself and Charles for something they both want, anyway.

His hands drag themselves down the sculpted lines of Charles’s body until they catch on the towel.  Erik’s just pulled it free of Charles’s hips, letting it fall to the ground, when Charles tips his head back.  The exposed swath of Charles’s throat is just as inviting, but Erik’s lips only just meet skin once more when Charles breathes out, “Wait.”

Wait?

Erik goes utterly still, despite the way Charles’s hands find his shoulders.

“Please-- not like this, not _because_ of this.” The nervous edge to Charles’s voice sends a cold, heavy weight tumbling down Erik’s spine.  “Is... is that okay?”

When Erik pulls away to look at Charles properly, it’s both startling, and not, how fragile he appears.

“It’s fine,” Erik says softly.  “Of course.  It’s fine.”

 

 

Charles’s head rises and falls with the breaths that fill and leave Erik’s chest. No matter how much he tries to clear his head and quiet his mind, the city streets seem closer and louder than they ought, and the light the slinks in through the curtains it positively indecent, given the fact that it's practically two in the morning.

Erik had been ready to - had been _willing_ to - fuck him.  Finally.  He’d been sure that’s what Erik had wanted.

And he’d said no.

No matter how many times Charles plays it over in his head, it never makes any real sense.

He tries to tell himself that it’s possible he’d simply been trying to playing into the part he’s sure Erik wants him to play, but the notion fails to resonate.  Maybe it’s just that he hadn’t known what else to do.  He’d expected Erik to be pleased with him-- proud of him.  But Erik had been little short of incredulous.  Like he hadn’t thought Charles capable of safeguarding himself from untoward advances.

Charles can’t tell if it’s the oversight on Erik’s part or the missed opportunity on his part that holds sleep at bay.


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quickie. Moar is coming.

A soft clatter of metal against china nudges Erik’s eyes open, rather than the blare of an alarm or the shrill ring of the phone.  He’s groggy and it’s too bright out; he’d worry that he’d overslept, but his vision comes into focus and he’s greeted by the sight of Charles sitting cross-legged on the bed, picking up a bowl from a room service tray.

Although the first syllable is completely unintelligible, he asks, “What time is it?”

“I let you sleep in.”  There are threads of amusement laced through Charles’s voice.  It’s hard to tell if that means that Charles is laughing at him, or if Charles is actually happy.

Even harder to tell, is which option is more improbable.

Erik watches Charles’s nimble fingers exalt a piece of cantaloupe - or maybe it’s melon-- he can never remember which one is the green one - and offer it to his mouth.  It’s strange, to think of those fingers wrapped around a stronger man’s wrist.  It’s stranger, still, to think of Charles’s grasp breaking bone.

The long shadow of Erik's temper gets restless at the thought, despite the fact that he can't conjure up a concrete idea of what he might have done, had he been there with Charles. That the situation never would have occurred, had he been there, fails to quiet the resonant certainty that he'd have done something more than break his wrist; in his mind, it's vague and formless, but undeniably _more_.

But then Charles’s lips quirk just a little around the edges, and Erik can feel his own face wanting to mirror the expression.  Of course, he’s spent too long staring, so Charles looks away.

“Are you happy?” he asks, before he can talk himself out of it.

He waits for Charles to give a non-answer, waits for Charles to turn it into some question.   _Why wouldn’t I be happy?_ he can almost hear on Charles’s voice.

When Charles’s lips part, however, he simply says, “I am.”

 

Charles can see Erik visibly relax.  It's strange to think, that his happiness could mean so much to someone else.

It makes it all the easier to part his lips, when Erik offers up a stout little wedge of pineapple from his own hand.

But he can see it-- that shadow that sweeps behind Erik's eyes, that flare of worry that he's done something to remind Charles of Shaw.  Were it not so ridiculous, the concern might be endearing.  Even though Charles closes his lips around the piece of fruit exactly as he'd have done for Shaw, letting his lips brush against the pads of Erik's fingertips, something to it is different. There aren't enough words to describe how dissimilar Erik and Sebastian are.  Or, perhaps, the trouble lies in the fact that he needs more words - more nuance - than simply 'good' and 'bad' to contrast them.

Words, however, he is quite sure are more trouble than they're worth, when it comes to Erik.  So before Erik can say anything, before Erik can ruin it, Charles simply plucks up a grape,  holding it so it very nearly touches Erik's lower lip.  And when Erik holds his gaze-- when Erik parts his lips and lets his tongue skim Charles's fingertips, there's no hint of that shadow.


	52. Chapter 52

For the life of him, Charles can’t sort out the source of that maddening... _chirping_ sound. The world is murky - blue hued and shadowed - as he grasps out, attempting to strangle the source of that sound.

Fabric gives way to cool polymer as his hand closes around Erik’s phone, the dark sitting area of the hotel suite hinting itself into being around him.

“Erik Lehnsherr’s phone,” he manages to say without yawning. Pleased with himself, he glances over to the television, which has reverted to some deranged infomercial for some elaborate exercise machine.

It’s only once he notices he’s been staring at some burly, ginger man on the screen for a few moments that he realises he’s heard no reply.

Before he can repeat himself, however, he hears Angel’s reluctant voice: “I need to talk to Erik.”

Charles’s gaze flickers over to Erik; he seems so much younger when he sleeps, the worried creases across his forehead easing into something more hopeful, as if he’s truly able to forget the waking world.

It’s a shame, really, to wake him. “Erik?” he says anyway, pushing lightly against Erik’s chest. “Phone-- the phone’s for you. It’s Angel. Come on, don’t be like that-- _Erik_. It sounds important.”

 

 

Erik watches as Charles slips off, making his way into the bedroom. The relief Charles absence inspires it quickly tainted with pricks of guilt. There’s some consolation in the fact that it’s an emergency. One of Shaw’s corporate Pets, one Logan has been establishing contact with, is in danger of being found out. The phone call is little more than Angel and Logan checking in before Logan heads out to collect the Pet in question, and Erik tells himself that the brevity of the call makes up for whatever it is that’s trying to nag at his conscience.

He manages to find the proper button to power off the television before he follows after Charles.

“I hadn’t realised we’d fallen asleep on the couch,” Erik mentions, the sound of it casual to his own ears as he closes the bedroom door.

Despite his expectations that Charles will simply follow the cue, to simply pick up the new topic and run with it, Charles is silent as he crawls into bed. It’s enough for Erik to slow his movements, trying to make them softer, more fluid, as Charles is likely either already asleep once more, or nearly so.

He’s wrong. Jarringly so. There’s nothing the least bit drowsy to Charles’s voice as he asks, “Are you an emancipator?”

For Charles, it’s probably a polite term, given the more colourful options someone like Shaw would have provided.

“Maybe,” he says, snaking an arm around Charles’s waist. “What do you mean-- what does that word mean, when you use it?”

Surely, it’s unhealthy for their odds of communicating, for him to find such a sense of victory in cutting Charles off from an easy answer. He knows he takes too much delight in Charles’s heavy silence, but it’s difficult to bring himself to care when it feels so much like progress.

“It’s a charitable term for a poacher,” Charles supplies, a beat too late.

“I don’t sell Pets.”

“That’s not--”

“If I stole someone’s Pet to sell them all over again, you could call me a poacher. But I don’t.” If it’s a semantic argument Charles wants, Erik is happy to give him one. “And I don’t steal, either.”

“You help Pets... escape their owners.” Charles’s dissatisfaction with the murky terminology seeping into the dark of the bedroom.

It’s hard to know what frightens Charles. It could be the idea of an owner who doesn’t want him. It could be the idea of someone mistreating a Pet, even if he and Erik would strongly disagree on what constitutes ‘mistreatment.’

“I help people,” he insists, only belatedly startled by how badly he wants Charles to understand. “I help people, who want help, to find freedom. Freedom from enslavement.”

The silence is thick enough that it takes a few long moments for the words to find their way out of Charles's mouth:  “Is that what you think I am? Do you look at me and see a slave?”

“Is there anything I could ask of you, that you would deny me?”

“Is there anything I might need, that you would not provide for me?”

That’s-- well, it’s not fair at all. Charles’s welfare is his responsibility. And even if it weren’t-- “That’s different.”

“How?” Charles presses, his palm searing hot against Erik’s bare chest. Even in the dark, Erik can see the intensity of Charles’s gaze; it’s as if he expects to be able to read the truth in Erik’s heartbeat. It shouldn’t so completely arrest Erik’s tongue, but it does. It renders him both silent and compliant as Charles pushes him onto his back, as he settles himself astride Erik’s hips. “What would you deny me, if I asked it of you?”

Erik finds himself pushing his elbows against the mattress in order to prop himself up. “There are things you’d never ask of me, you wouldn’t--” He wishes he could go on, but he knows what will follow: Charles will only turn the words back against him, and - worst of it all - they wouldn’t be untrue; if he could help it, he’d never do anything to abuse the position of power he has over Charles.

It rather complicates his arguement.

Voice soft, but sure, Charles says, “You think I’m fucked up.”

Erik sighs. “Everyone’s fucked up, one way or another. Me included. And you still like me, right?”

Charles’s smile seems pulled to his mouth against his will, though no shame comes with it. “I do. Very much.”

“Charles--”

Just that quickly, Charles’s lips cover his own. “Don’t,” he breathes, eyes pressed firmly shut. “Please, don’t. It’s perfect. Just--”

 _Perfect_ is good enough for Erik. Charles yields easily enough to his kiss. It’s perfect, as both melts and hardens above him. As his fingers slip effortlessly into Charles, finding him already slick and ready. Later, Erik will find the mental space to marvel at Charles’s resolve - at what it must take to want something, to hope for it, to prepare for it every day, and to be left wanting, and yet to show so little sign of frustration - but there’s no room in his mind for much of anything when Charles pushes his hand away-- when Charles hitches his hips forward and arches the curve of his arse against Erik’s erection.

They don’t discuss it. They don’t talk, and they don’t question. Charles simply sinks himself onto Erik’s cock; were Erik able to hear the sharp sound that leaps from Charles’s throat over the noise of his own groan, it might have alarmed him. And then it’s just the sound of their heavy breaths, stammering and thudding out with every rock of Charles’s body. The sound of their breathing and the sheets falling away. It’s enough to drown out the distant sounds of the city, and everything that might exist outside their room.

Erik can’t tell when Charles riding him turns into Erik holding Charles’s hips still, into Erik planting his feet against the bed and fucking up into Charles. It doesn’t matter, when. Not when Charles looks vindicated, and lost to sensation, and absolutely perfect in the barely-there light sneaking into the room.

Charles’s cock leaks just a little more with every throb, but he bats away Erik’s hand, every time. “Please,” he finally rasps out. “Tell me-- tell me to come.”

“Come,” Erik obeys, as if by compulsion. “Come for me-- fuck, I want--”

His hips snap upwards, harshly, at the feel of Charles coming across his stomach. Charles lets out a sharp, shuddering groan, fingers digging into Erik’s chest, his bowing back moving his lips dangerously close to Erik’s once more.

Erik’s mouth latches onto the bare stretch of Charles’s neck just an instant before he’s coming himself, riding out the thrums of his release with bruises at Charles’s skin.

His mind is piecing itself back together to a score of soft syllables. Charles is still on top of him, curled in against his chest, face in the crook of his neck.

“ _Erik_ ,” Charles is panting out, over and over again, as if he can say everything he needs to in the four letters of his name.


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hogod I've been trying so hard to do this all in one big update, but.... yeah. That's just not happening. So, I'm starting to post now, as a motivator to fill in the few gaps before the week's out.

There’s a body, tucked snug against his own.  It’s almost unsettling, after enough years of never letting anyone linger long, that Erik doesn’t even start to wonder who he’s with.  Charles has been in his bed for months, in one fashion or another.

He’d worried, just for a few moments, that once they’d gotten home thing might go back to the way they’d been before.  Before the hotel, before the conference.  But it’s been two weeks-- maybe the easiest two weeks of Erik’s life.

Even Azazel’s dead-end leads don’t infuriate him quite so much.

And Charles seems to have settled in ways Erik can’t quite put into words-- it's as if Charles has finally let himself breathe. Properly.  On the one hand, it sometimes seems as though Charles had been the one working himself up over nothing, and just as often Erik will wonder how much grief he could have saved them both if, weeks ago, he’d been the one to just--

Too much thinking, at far too early an hour in the morning.  It’s both pointless and useless, when his idle hands have taken to tracing out the taper of Charles’s waist.

“Skin’s cold,” Erik murmurs against Charles’s shoulder as he stirs.  All it earns him, however, is a bit of muttering on Charles’s part that has something to do with ‘ _worst pickup line ever_.’

  
  


“I’ve been thinking.”  Charles watches Angel’s expression flicker with something wary.  He ignores it, and carries on, winding his pasta around the tines of his fork.  “You’re contesting Cain’s claim on the inheritance based on the priority of owners’ rights--  what happens if Cain’s lawyer argues that I was underage?  That my sale was invalid?”

Across the table, Erik leans back in his chair, taking his glass of malbec with him.  “Then everything would revert to you.”

Erik says that, like it's a simple thing.  Like it's a perfectly reasonable expectation.  When it comes to trying to envision such a reality, Charles's best efforts only ever produce a sort of mental white noise.  It's a shortcoming that cultivates its own, particular, frustration.

“Hard to imagine Cain going along with that,” Angel says, even if the words are all but absorbed by the hunk of Italian bread she crams into her mouth.  It leaves her mouth conveniently full when Erik shoots her a mild glare.

“There’s no way for Cain to keep your inheritance;  it’ll either be mine, or it’ll be yours.”  There’s a certainty there that Charles wants to trust, even if every scrap of sense he has is insisting he hold back.  “And Charles, if it’s mine, it’s yours, anyway.”

It’s impossible to take Erik entirely seriously when he says things that, legally, hold no weight.  “That’s not--”

“It is, if I make you the administrator of its worth.”  Charles knows better than to directly disagree when Erik looks that pleased with himself; inevitably, it’s some sort of trap where Erik already knows the answer.  So he keeps quiet as Erik goes on: “If you’re my Pet, then I’m allowed to delegate to you any task I see fit.  And if Brian Xavier’s estate comes to me, tending to it will be your responsibility.”

Charles glances to Angel, but she’s no help; she just shrugs and hides behind her glass of wine.

It shouldn’t matter.  It hasn’t mattered, for years, what had happened with the estate.  With his parents’ estate.  There’s no reason for him to have to fight back a smile, or for him to need to force his voice into something neutral as he says, “I see.”

But he does.


	54. Chapter 54

“This is a horrible idea,” Charles whispers. Well. He more so mouths the words than even dares to whisper them.

Angel, perched at the opposite side of the doorframe silently shushes him with an enthusiasm that borders on violent.

Charles sighs, but there’s no excusing the fact that stays where he is, listening in on Erik’s call with Azazel.

“There’s no way that can be legal,” comes Erik’s voice, muffled by the closed door.

It’d be easier if Charles hadn’t heard any of it-- which wouldn’t have happened at all if Angel hadn’t grabbed him by the arm and dragged him over to the hallway outside Erik’s office to eavesdrop. He glares in Angel’s direction.

She rolls her eyes. And flips him off. Charles looks down to Caesar, who sits near his feet. Caesar’s ears drop another notch, but he doesn’t otherwise object.

“Just have Logan deal with it-- he’s good at getting in where he shouldn’t be.” It’s more frustrated than Erik’s sounded all month. “Well, call him again, he’s probably just lost the damned charger.”

Silence follows. For far too long.

Something shatters.

“How could you not know Shaw had a hand in this!” Erik bellows.

Angel darts forward, grabs Charles’s wrists, and drags him down towards the kitchen.

Caesar gives a soft whine in the direction of Erik’s door before bounding off after Angel and Charles.

 

If Erik weren’t aware of the fact that he looks like hell, the way Charles looks into him when he walks into the bedroom would have been enough.

On any other day, it’d seem nice, that Charles had waited up for him. Maybe it’s the fact that Logan is missing, or that he’s gone missing on an extraction errand on Erik’s instructions, or that Erik’s sure Shaw is the one pulling the strings-- but nothing seems nice at the moment.

It helps, though, that Charles says nothing. That he doesn’t ask any questions. He doesn’t want to lie to Charles, but he doesn’t want to tell him the truth, either. And Charles just sets aside his book, and pushes down the covers for Erik to climb into bed.

After stripping down to his underwear, Erik does just that. He expects Charles to slide down into bed with him, but he remains sitting. Already exhausted with the idea of questions about Logan and defense of Shaw, of all fucking people-- but then Erik wants to cringe, because part of him is sure that Charles will just parrot out the words Erik had crammed into his mouth about Shaw, and--

“No talking,” Charles says quietly, pulling Erik’s head into his lap. There’s nothing suggestive about it, with the way the blankets are drawn up around Charles’s hips, but his hand doesn’t leave Erik’s hair. Instead, his fingertips start massaging little circles into Erik’s scalp.

A few minutes of that, and silence, and Erik’s body goes almost alarmingly slack. He feels twice as exhausted as he’s sure he looks, but there’s something he wants to say. It’s just hard to remember what it is, when he’s not entirely sure if he’s awake or not.

“Charles,” he mumbles.

“Sleep, Erik.”

It’s sound advice.

 

Erik had been asleep still, when Charles had gotten up to shower. Nevertheless, it’s somehow far from surprising to find him awake, sitting on the edge of the bed by the time Charles comes back into the bedroom, towel slung around his hips.

“I need to ask you a few things,” Erik says heavily, almost pointedly meeting Charles’s eye.

“About Shaw?” he supposes, turning to the dresser. Whilst he picks out underwear and a t-shirt, he doesn’t bother trying to dissect Erik’s silence.

He’s only just pulling his shirt on by the time Erik asks, “Was he involved in collecting new Pets? By force?”

So much of him wants to hope not. And too much of him fears it might be true. “I don’t know,” he says, smoothing out his shirt and eager for the distraction of finding a suitable pair of jeans.

“How can you not know?” Erik all but snaps.

Something about the tone sets Charles’s spine rigid. The absurdity of the question is staggering. How can he not know what Shaw got up to-- what _illegal_ things Shaw got up to? The same damned way that he has no idea what's happened to Logan. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” he says flatly, shoving the drawer shut. Jeans in hand, he walks from the room, heading down to his old bedroom to finish getting dressed.


	55. Chapter 55

Azazel gives his phone a bored stare, but it continues to buzz, regardless. He likes Lehnsherr, but the man can get fixated to the point of obsession. It cannot be healthy, and the way he takes others’ lack of emotional excitement as a lack of conviction can be tiresome.

Lifting his phone to his ear, he asks, “What do you want now?”

The beat of silence is unexpected. “It’s Charles.”

Azazel pulls his phone into view; it is Erik’s number, but the little icon for his landline is illuminated. It would hardly be unreasonable for Charles to use the phone in the flat, but in the past Charles has always used his mobile. Charles, it seems, rarely does things without cause. “I suppose this means you would prefer Erik not know that you called?”

“Not yet.” It is almost disappointing, that Charles sounds so unsurprised at his intentions being so easily read. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Azazel leans back in his chair. “I am sure you aware that there are things Erik would prefer you did not know.”

“Erik’s a poacher, Angel’s his tracker, and Logan’s his retriever-- do let me know when I’ve missed the mark,” his words come out crisp, though not snide, but with enough of a guess beneath them for Azazel to be sure that Charles has noticed more than Erik realises.

“Hello?” Charles presses, when all he provides is silence.

“When you miss the mark, I will let you know,” Azazel smiles. Again, he doubts Charles is surprised. Lehnsherr has no appreciation for this particular code of conduct, but there is a way to hold to the letter of decorum while still skirting the spirit.

“Logan was on a retrieval assignment when he went missing.”

Obvious, Azazel thinks, given the circumstances.

Given his silence, Charles continues, “And Sebastian has Logan.”

Azazel has to smile; Charles has a knack for casting a net. “Hold, there.”

“No one knows who has Logan,” Charles revises. A moment of silence, or two, passes before he asks, “Have I dropped the call?”

“I am still here,” Azazel says, dutifully.

This time, it is Charles who stays quiet. When he speaks again, his tone has a practiced sort of neutrality: “One of the Winston boys is due for a birthday soon, if memory serves.”

Wealthy family. Well-connected. And connected to Shaw. “Jonathan, the youngest. There is a party for the occasion, tomorrow night.” Azazel considers, for half a moment; this, surely, is Charles’s aim. “I have an invitation, but it is the sort of affair where one needs a Pet in tow, in order to be considered worthwhile.”

“For that, you’d have to ask Erik. Naturally.”


	56. Chapter 56

“You have to call him,” Charles says quietly, plucking a flute champagne from a passing waiter. They aren’t staying for the toast, so it hardly matters that Charles starts drinking his.

“You are ready to let Erik in on your little plan?” Azazel asks, pretending to watch the band on the other side of the room.

“Sebastian,” he corrects. “Apparently, he’s acquired someone new. Very recently.”

The fact that the only ones willing to admit that they know even that much are Pets is usually indicates a lack of Agency involvement; and while a proper Pet rarely reveals anything about their owners, they can be persuaded to provide to disclose gossip on other owners.

Azazel glances at Charles out of the corner of his eyes. “You think he will answer his phone? Everyone seems to think he is off skiing somewhere.”

The way one side of Charles’s mouth tries to lift is uncomfortable. “Sebastian hates skiing.”

 

Thankfully, Azazel steps out of the elevator first-- apparently, Erik is within view. “Azazel?”

Charles ignores the desire to wonder whether it’s coincidence or if Erik had been waiting for him. Barely looking up, he makes his way over to the couch, pulling loose and discarding his tie as he goes.

“Shaw has Logan,” he hears Azazel say, and he can feel the way the room frosts over. He can feel Erik’s gaze, heavy on him. But just that quickly, Azazel is pulling Erik’s focus back to him: “Rumor had it, Shaw has someone new. You know how he likes to brag, and you know how others like to chat to what they think is a sympathetic ear.”

It’s well done, the way Azazel can make it sound as though Charles hadn’t had a hand in any of it. He wants to be grateful, but all he can muster is appreciation for the gesture.

“You know for certain?” Erik asks, something uncertain creeping under his tone. Charles can’t quite bring himself to look at Erik. He’s too tired, somehow. He has no idea what to do with his face or how to evoke innocence at the moment.

“I called him.”

“You did.” It’s more a question than a statement, but it doesn’t to faze Azazel.

Something in Charles bristles at the implication that it could have been him-- as if he would risk so much, when he wasn’t even certain.

“Of course,” Azazel says smoothly. “I am a reasonable emissary between the two of you. He has Logan, and has done nothing with him-- it can only mean he wants to negotiate.”

“Negotiate?” Erik growls. “Negotiate _what_?”

This time, it’s Azazel who glances at Charles. “Perhaps we should talk in private.”

 

Charles. Shaw wants a week with Charles. Oh, and for Erik to back off of his financials, too.

It’s bait. It has to be. He’s asking for Charles first so that Erik will balk, so that he’ll adamantly refuse. Then Shaw can come back with just the second demand-- with Erik ‘just’ leaving alone the curious areas Azazel has finally been able to uncover in Shaw’s accounting.

He won’t do either. It’s infuriating, how long he has to yell as much in Azazel’s direction for the man to accept it. Erik’s can’t. He won’t. He’s not going to barter with Shaw.

 

Azazel’s ears are still ringing as he steps into the elevator. When its descent comes to a halt and the doors slide open on the second floor, Azazel is not entirely surprised to see Charles on the other side. It is curious, how different Charles looks in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt; dressed up, he is like a piece of art. For Azazel, it is rare to enjoy the structure more than the art.

“He said no,” Charles surmises as Azazel steps out, into the hall.

“Of course,” he replies, unable to do more than shrug. It is not as though he had expected any other response.

By the resignation in Charles’s nod, neither had he. But Charles would not be here merely to confirm his expectations. Azazel lifts his brow.

“Make it happen,” Charles says, with a steel behind his eyes that makes Azazel want to grin.

“You know what he is asking--”

“One night.”

Azazel’s brow creeps even higher. One week had been an opening offer, and all opening offers are to be extravagant so that they can be bartered down to something reasonable, but Charles’s limit is longer than anticipated. “A lot can happen in one night.”

Under other circumstances, the severity of Charles’s underwhelm would have been humourous. “I’ll survive my time with Shaw. The same can’t be said of Logan.”

With that, he cannot argue. Small parts of him wish to caution Charles, to point out that whatever mercies Shaw might have shown in the past cannot be counted upon. As if catching his thoughts, Charles’s chin lifts, ever so; however unexpected from Charles, it is no shock that one who has survived so many years with Shaw could command an air of fortitude.

“One night,” he acknowledges.


	57. Chapter 57

Erik isn’t at breakfast the next morning, either.

He’s barely been home, since Logan went missing. Since Shaw got Logan. And they’ve barely spoken, since Charles had told him to stop asking questions.

“He’s not mad at you,” Angel says, seemingly out of the blue.

Then again, Charles hasn’t so much as touched his waffle, replete with fresh blueberries. Perhaps she interprets his lack of appetite as some manifestation of angst. She might be right, but she’s no better; Charles is fairly certain that Angel resorts to cooking when she doesn’t know what else to do. There are worse coping mechanisms-- which is why he’d sat himself at the kitchen counter. He might not be remotely interested in eating, but enabling her seems to be the only productive thing he can do at the moment.

“Well, he’s mad at the whole universe,” she amends, distractedly trying to liberate her own waffle from the maker. “And you know how much he hates feeling like there’s nothing he can do.”

It’s the spark of deja-vu that cuts through the quiet storm of Charles’s concerns. Picking up his cutlery, he starts cutting up his waffle for the illusion of progress, and finds he can’t remember the last time Angel felt obligated to explain Erik’s moods to him.

“He’s worried,” he says, wishing he could be amused by the way Angel’s waffle is now swimming in a plate of syrup. “We all are. But he’ll think of something.”

God, but it’s surprising, how desperately he finds he hopes Erik does. He can’t bring himself to eat yet, so he just pushes the pieces of breakfast around his plate as Angel sets in on hers.

Or tries to. She makes a gagging sound, and Charles looks up, startled, as she forces a swallow.

“Ugh,” she groans, disgust coating her features. “Blueberry waffles are gross. Who came _up_ with this?”

Charles laughs, in part because she needs him to-- and in part just because he needs to.

 

Charles runs.

He lets his feet hammer against the treadmill, lets him lose his thoughts in burn of his body and the ache of his lungs. He runs until everything hurts.

_Hey! Kid!_

Charles hops off the piece that moves, shoving his feet against the static frame of the machine.

_\-- hands are up here._

He lets the heel of his hand fall against the button to turn the damn thing off. It’s stupid, he’s sure, not to try to cool down, but he’s beyond caring. At this point, he’s felt faintly nauseous for so long that he thinks he’d actually welcome throwing up.

When the autopilot clicks off of Charles’s brain, he finds himself in the gym shower. Well, he’s leaning against the wall, and the shower’s going, hitting his stomach and lower. He must have been standing under it at some point, though, because his hair is sopping wet.

He hates the dread that’s taken up residence in the pit of his stomach. Or maybe it’s just the guilt, over dreading anything.

Shaw will kill Logan. Logan will be dead. No amount of wishing he weren’t so certain can make it so. Better him than Logan. Better someone who can take what’s coming to them than someone who can’t. 

Shaw won’t-- Sebastian isn’t going to hurt him. Not really. He may have pushed Charles to his limits, but Sebastian had always known what ‘too far’ would be.

Hadn’t he?

He must have. Charles is still here, after all. And he’s fine. So it’ll be fine. He’s been through this before. He’s been with Sebastian before. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? He’s not doing anything that he hasn’t done already, a hundred times over.

It’ll be fine. And the part of him that’s ragged with the hope that Erik will come up with some something, will find another way out, is weak-- and worse: selfish. So he tries to ignore it.

 

Erik has to wonder if Charles has been waiting up for him. Actually, it occurs to him to wonder whether Charles has been waiting up for him every night this week, and this just happens to be the first time Erik’s come home in time to catch it.

He can’t remember where they left off, so he hasn’t got any idea where to pick up. So he starts peeling off his clothes in silence.

“You said you needed to ask me things,” Charles says, quiet but composed, as Erik tosses his tie onto the dresser.

Erik wants to grimace. Which time? It’s jarring, the discordance between Charles’s esteem of a Pet’s obedience and the way he falls back to protect Shaw, every fucking time.

“You finally feel like talking?” he can’t stop himself from griping. “Now? Not three days ago-- do you have any idea how much can happen in three--”

“You said you needed to ask me things,” Charles repeats. This time, Erik looks up. Charles is just sitting there, cross legged atop the bed, studying his fucking ankles, or something.

_I don’t know anything that could help you._

“You’ve lied to me before,” Erik accuses, something hungry and vicious in the pit of his stomach soothed by the way Charles goes just a little pale, like he’s finally fucking listening. “Or what, do you still think," even as Erik hears himself saying it, "after everything," he wishes he could stop himself, "that I'm secretly working for Shaw?”

In the time it takes for Charles’s eyes to dart up to meet his own, a knee-jerk sort of terror has blown Charles’s pupils so wide that the blue all but vanishes.

“Charles--”

Charles flinches. In an instant, it seems obvious, how scared Charles had been, his first few weeks with Erik. How lost he’d felt, how desperate he’d been for some kind of reassurance he could process. He can see it-- the barriers that Charles uses insulates himself when he can't take any more, trying to revive themselves, trying to claw their way back up.

“I’m sorry,” Erik breathes, hating himself. The words have never been easier to say. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

He hates the fact that he can’t seem to look after a single damn thing in his life. The thought threatens to consume him entirely, but it doesn’t quite crest over the fear that Charles will calcify again-- that he’ll retreat within himself and pull up his walls, the way he used to. 

That Charles will shut him out and maybe never trust Erik enough to share his fears again.

And that-- that can’t happen. Not now. Not when Erik knows who Charles is, who Charles _can_ be-- they can’t go back to how it had been before. He can’t trade this Charles for zombie-Charles. He loves _this_ Charles, not--

Oh, god.

No. That’s not what he--

“ERIK!”

Erik blinks, and looks up at Charles. Looks up? He doesn’t remember getting to his knees. Or being this close to the bed. Before his thoughts get much further than that, Charles is turning his face from side to side, peering at him.

“Lift up both your arms,” Charles demands.

“What?”

“Just do it!”

Baffled, Erik raises both hands above his head, if only because it looks as though Charles might combust if he doesn’t.

After eyeing both hoisted hands, Charles insists, “Now smile.”

“Charles, what the hell--”

“This is the only way I know to figure out if someone is having a stroke!”

“Damnit, I am not having a stroke!” Erik snaps, dropping his arms.

Charles studies his face for a few moments more, genuine worry tugging at his features.

“I’m fine,” Erik says, far more evenly. It’s not true, of course. “I’m just--”

“We’re all worried,” Charles finishes for him.

Worried. Skirting the edge of sanity. Sounds about right.

Come on,” Charles says quietly, pulling him up onto the bed. 

He’s still wearing his trousers, but it feels as though he hasn’t seen Charles in a week, so Erik just curls around him. They stay like that for a while, tangled up with each other, Charles’s lips against his forehead and Charles’s fingers carding through his hair.

“We’ll get him back,” Charles swears, with a fervor that has to be fueled by sheer desperation.

He can't bring himself to tell Charles that he has no idea where Shaw is. That the only lead he'd had, the one that had led them to Aspen, had turned out to be nothing at all. And he can't tell Charles what the options are, because he's all too sure of what Charles would volunteer to do.

"I still don't know if this is something Shaw does," he hears Charles say. "If there's anything-- he never--"

"It's all right, Charles," he says. "I was just... grasping at straws. But. I'll think of something."

Charles's whole body seems to tighten around him, clinging to him. He'd known that Charles liked Logan, but he hadn't realized Charles cared this much.


	58. Chapter 58

The shower’s running. The bed next to Charles is still warm.

As he curls up the last of Erik’s lingering body heat, he tries not to think of it as the last time. He tries not to think about the night before.

About the way it had seemed as though they were both trying to escape the world in the way they’d clung each other.

About the way Erik’s breath echoing in his ear had drowned out everything else, or the almost startled tinge to Erik’s groan as he came, buried inside Charles, with Charles’s shoulders braced against the headboard.

About how Erik’s thumb had smeared clear the tear-damp tracks down Charles’s cheeks. _Are you-- did that hurt?_

Or about how quickly he’d had to rasp out, _No, not at all, I just... needed that._

Because Erik’s never going to look at him the same way again.

The shower shuts off, and Charles turns onto his side to feign sleep.

 

Charles is still in bed by the time his phone buzzes, vibrating gently against the mattress.

9:07 am, according to the clock. He doesn’t have to check to know it’s Azazel.

“Hello?”

“Tonight,” comes Azazel’s quiet voice. “8:30.”

“You’ll see to Hank?”

“Yes. All you need do is to be at the door, and provide him with instructions. The rest, I will see to.”

His thumb and index finger fiddle along the pillow's edge, wishing for a loose thread to tug. “And Erik--?”

“I have his schedule. Angel will be your only concern.”

Charles almost laughs. Of all his concerns, Angel is the least of them.

Half an hour later, he’s still in bed. He should get up. It’s hard to find a reason, though. Erik’s been paying one of the doorman’s nephews to walk Caesar since Logan disappeared, so he doesn’t even need to do that.

He should shower. Or maybe he shouldn’t-- maybe he should show up, smelling of Erik. Maybe that’s what Sebastian wants, to play the part of the jilted, jealous lover.

But something like a warning trembles up his spine, and Charles is pushing himself out of bed.

 

Angel’s on the roof, with Caesar. Testing out the new rooftop lawn.

Erik’s conveniently been detained somewhere.

Charles stands next to the elevator, holding his metal collar in his hand. 

He can’t take it. As much as he wants to, he can’t. It has no keys, no screws, no anything to make it impossible to remove. It’s just too easy to imagine Sebastian tearing it away from his neck. Bending the pieces, mangling them so that they never fit back together again.

Or worse, not giving it back at all.

Sebastian’s getting enough for one night-- he can’t have this, too.

Stepping into the elevator, Charles snaps the band of generic black leather at the nape of his neck. It’s dull and lifeless, offering no reminders of Erik’s promise not to sell him. But at least with this one, he’ll feel no less naked when it’s taken.

 

Just as Hank is about to step out of his car, the passenger door opens and in climbs Charles, who picks up Hank’s medical kit off the seat and just sits down. Of course, it takes him a moment to recognise Charles. The last time he’d been at Lehnsherr’s, he had been a bit preoccupied with Logan.

“Uh. Charles,” he musters by way of greeting. Charles pulls the door shut behind himself. “What are--”

“We’ve got to go pick Logan up,” Charles says, with a sort of finality that seems out of sorts.

“Azazel didn’t say any--” He abandons that thought even as it forms; full disclosure is not among Azazel’s many skills. “Where's Erik?”

“Occupied. Do you really wish to continue wasting time?” Hank blinks back a flashback of the last time Angel had yelled at him. The scant second of silence is enough to flatten the line of Charles’s mouth. “Perhaps Azazel summoned the wrong sort of doctor-- if you insist on waiting much longer, we’ll have more use of a medical examiner. Anyone in particular you would recommend?”

Actually, he thinks he’d rather have Angel yelling at him.

“Any chance you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on,” Hank mutters, all but scowling as he pulls back out into traffic. Lehnsherr’s asked for a lot over the years, but at least it’s as straightforward as patching someone up. With the sort of business Lehnsherr gets mixed up in, Hank’s more than a little concerned for his own well-being.

“You’re a doctor,” Charles says, the barbs from his tone gone as he buckles his seatbelt. “You’re _being_ a doctor.”

“How about where the hell we’re _going_?”

“Turn left in three blocks.”

 

“There,” Charles says quietly, opening for Hank’s medical kit.

“There _where_?” Hank snaps, warily eyeing the alley Charles has led them down. He doesn’t blame Hank. But the less Hank knows, the better. He’s the only loose end who might go running to Erik.

“Pull up next to the limo, just up there,” Charles says, distractedly rummaging through the various compartments of the bag.

“Hey, what--”

“Don’t you have any sedatives in here?” he asks, bewildered at the idea that Hank might not.

“What!”

What sort of doctor doesn’t carry-- “Ah.”

He snags two before Hank slams on the breaks and snatches back the bag. They’re still a few metres off from the limo. “Enough! You’re going to tell me _exactly_ what is--”

Charles’s seatbelt flies free and he opens the door. “You leave without him, and Logan dies.” A guess, but not beyond the realm of possibility. And it shuts Hank up long enough for Charles to step out and close the door.

 

Every beat of Logan’s sluggish pulse drives another throb behind his left eye. After this, he is taking a goddamned vacation. He’d going to go fucking fishing. There’ll be a cabin. And everything.

And Lehnsher’s going to give him a fucking gun, or he’s done.

“It’s eight-thirty.” Shaw’s smarmy voice comes dripping out of his smarmy mouth, as he sits there in the sleazy white suit. Bastard just likes to hear himself yammer on. Neither the thug next to Logan or the thug next to Shaw says anything. And it’s not as if Shaw expects _him_ to talk through the duct tape over his mouth.

Really should have shaved... last week. Or whenever it was. His lungs try to laugh, but there’s a wet ache that goes along with it that cuts it short.

“Oh, I really don’t think it’s--”

The door opens. And in steps Charles. Blushing and doe-eyed. With his stupid doe-eyes aimed right at Shaw.

Logan fights the thwack of nausea that smacks at his gut.

No. This isn’t-- it _can’t_ \--

“And here I thought you were going to be late.” The sickly-sweet on Shaw’s voice is revolting.

And Charles flashes this coy fucking smile that makes Logan want to slam his head against the car window over how fucking stupid they’ve all been. “City traffic,” that back-stabbing, traitor mother fucker shrugs as he reaches out to toy with a button of Shaw’s shirt.

He only realises he’s trying to yell when Shaw looks his way and _smiles_. But Charles, Charles just sitting there like he doesn’t even fucking exist is worse.

“He doesn’t seem thrilled,” Shaw beams, so smug Logan could choke on it.

Charles’s fingertips turn Shaw back to him. “I’m here.” He leans in and Logan’s sure he’s to vomit. “I thought that’s what mattered?”

He’s going to vomit, and choke on it, and that’s how he’s going to die. In the backseat of Shaw’s limo, the only one of them who knows that Shaw’s been using Charles to play them all like fucking idiots.

When Charles kisses Shaw, his stomach makes a valiant effort of it, but they’re no match for the wheeze in his lungs.

He’s dizzy and the whole damned universe is spinning by the time he realises Charles is close to him. With his hands numb and tied behind his back, with someone doing something to his ankles to keep them still, he can’t even try to fight back as Charles shoves something sharp against his arm.

“Do try not to punch anyone,” are the last words he hears before the world goes black.

 

It’s difficult to gracefully get out of a car when someone has their fist around one’s collar. Though Charles is sure he misses grace by a wide margin, he hopes he manages a bit of dignity as one of Shaw’s men accompanies him out onto the street. The other has Logan thrown over his shoulder; it can’t be good for whatever injuries Logan has - and given his much-bruised, still-bleeding face, Charles is willing to bet they’re extensive - but it would be worse, he’s sure, if Logan were struggling.

Hank’s terrified expression causes Charles to wince, but at least he makes no attempt to drive off.

While Logan is carelessly hefted into the backseat, Charles tries to step up to Hank’s window, only to find himself jerked back by his collar.

“I just need a word,” he says mildly. It barely earns him any leeway, but at least Hank rolls down his window. Pulling from his back pocket a list of directions and an access card, Charles tell Hank, “Take him back to his apartment. Don’t call Erik.”

The back door slams shut and Hank jumps. He looks from Logan, to Charles, to the two men now standing behind Charles. Hanks eyes go wide, brimming with the sort of anger that almost always proceeds someone doing something monumentally foolish.

“Hank,” Charles says sharply. “You’re a doctor. You have a patient. Now go be a doctor.”

Whatever Hank opens his mouth to say, Charles doesn’t hear as he’s pulled back towards Sebastian.


	59. Chapter 59

It’s familiar in ways that ought to be more comforting than they are, for Charles to find himself kneeling, palms up, once again. Erik never has him do this. Erik had been put off by this. But thoughts of Erik, he has to shove from his mind, otherwise his pulse starts picking up and his calm becomes a tenuous thing.

“Does he even have any idea what to do with something as fine as you?” Sebastian wonders aloud, circling him.

It’s difficult enough, having lost the cadence of Sebastian’s desires, and alone - in the modest bedroom of this new flat, with the other two men now gone - Charles has nothing else to cue off of. Instinct tells him to move the topic away from Erik.

Charles hazards a glance up through his lashes. “You still find me fine?”

Sebastian chuckles as he prowls. It’s difficult to remember how he’d once found the sound so reassuring. “You know, I’m surprised he changed his mind about my little offer.”

Sure that Sebastian is digging for details, Charles tries to smooth out his features into something neutral. As Sebastian tips up his chin to look at him, it’s a mask he manages to maintain, even if there’s a stranger staring at him through Sebastian’s once-familiar eyes.

“Oh, _Charles_ \-- you naughty little thing,” his voice - pleased and too warm and somehow _smug_ \- makes it difficult for Charles to resist the urge to blink. “Did you miss me that much?” As he crowds in closer, hunch himself over, Sebastian’s fingertips dig along Charles’s jaw, as if bent on keeping him perfectly still. Charles doesn’t think he could move if he wanted to. “Have you run away for me-- you hoping I’ll keep you? Keep you safe and tucked away, here in the city where Emma won’t ever have to know?”

God, but he wants to push Sebastian away, to put just a little more space between them so he can breathe, so he can _clarify_ \-- He’s... relieved, he supposes, that Sebastian hadn’t forgotten about him the moment he’d left, and that only makes him feel worse over having to disabuse Sebastian of the fantasy he so clearly wants to play out. Maybe he could, if it weren’t for the viciously hungry thing radiating off of Sebastian.

It physically hurts to draw in the breath to say it, but Sebastian _has_ to understand: “Tonight,” he breathes, every syllable an apology. He can’t say _no_ , Sebastian hates that word coming out of his mouth. “This is just for tonight.”

Something changes in the smouldering heat of Sebastian’s gaze, but Charles doesn’t even get a chance to see what it becomes before his head is wrenched back, the fist-hold against his hair stinging at his scalp.

“What did you say?” Sebastian hisses against his ear, and Charles can’t keep at bay the memory of Erik’s mouth against that same scrap of skin. That’s all it takes for his mind to latch itself to the reassurance that he’s Erik’s, that in the morning, he’ll go back to Erik, and even if Erik hates him, it’ll be fine, because at least it isn’t--

“Sebastian, please--” he manages as his hands, his stupid hands, rebel. They lift themselves from atop his thighs to push against Sebastian’s chest before he can think to stop them.

The crack of the back of Sebastian’s hand, he doesn’t even feel. But he hears it, before his vision flickers and fades.

 

It’s the third finger, stretching him wide, that snaps Charles’s eyes open to the tune of a startled gasp.

“So nice of you to rejoin the party.” There’s nothing kind in the wet satin of Sebastian’s voice.

Charles doesn’t test the hold of handcuffs that bind his wrists to the bedframe. One is a little looser than it ought to be, but pointing that out to Sebastian is unlikely to earn him any rewards at the moment.

He offers no resistance as Sebastian slings Charles’s knee over his shoulder, stretching his legs wider. Every inch of his flesh feels as though it’s on pins and needles. The sting of it only courts the ingrained, well-tutored want for more.

“I wanted to fuck you dry,” Sebastian mentions, as if talking to himself. It adds a level of threat to the way his fingers move, as if trying to leech away the lube Charles had prepped himself just an hour before. “Wanted you to wake up screaming. Does Lehnsherr have you do this?”

Charles tries to ignore the way his leg trembles, just a bit, and the warmth of Sebastian’s skin. Eventually, the fear will ebb, and he can lose himself in the rest. His body is well trained enough to make do without his having to pay attention.

“Does he like your back-talk-- like putting you in your place?”

He can’t even muster a reply before Sebastian is slamming into him, wrenching a sharp cry from him; too much lubricant has been wiped away, and the stretch of it burns along Charles’s chanel.

But at least Sebastian’s eyes go blank. Even as he clutches as Charles’s hips, it’s not as biting as it could be. That should be a comfort. It should be a balm against unease that’s lodged itself in his bones.

“Christ-- does he never fuck you? How the hell are still so tight?” Sebastian groans, and Charles tries to let his mind fill with white noise as he traps his lower lip between his teeth.

 

He screams around the gag, when Sebastian’s fist sinks all the way inside him. And again, as the friction of Sebastain’s cock along his own pushes him over the brink.

 

“ -- _please_!”

“Please, what, precious?” Shaw bites at his clavicle, using his free hand to tug at the chain linking the clamps digging into Charles’s nipples.

“It _hurts_!” The ache is lost in the slam of Sebastian’s hips. He’s going to cry. Maybe he already is. He's going to come. Or pass out. The last is by far the most appealing option.

“You need more?” Sebastian purrs. He tugs again and Charles’s leaking erection strains against Sebastian’s abdomen.

“I-- I don’t--” He doesn’t know what he needs. But some part of him manages to hope that it isn’t this. Sebastian’s hand closes around his throat, squeezing his fingers under the generic collar. The rim of Charles’s vision goes shadowed. He makes a desperate, pleading sound, nodding his head as frantically as he please. “Please,” he chokes out. “ _Please_ , I need--”

 

There’s a rhythm to this. A way to go numb. He’s never thought of it as numb before, but it’s the only word that works. It’s the only word he has to make sense of how little he cares, about the way Sebastian is fucking his throat, about the too-tight stretch of the plug filling his arse.

Dimly, he thinks he can remember a sense of pride that came with this. With Sebastian’s every moan, with every involuntary spasm of Sebastian’s hips. It used to mean something. Maybe it still would, if he were capable of giving Sebastian what he wants. What he really wants.

But he can’t, of course. Because he’s Erik’s. And he can’t give Erik what he wants, either, because Erik’s ruined him. He’s ruined himself. Now, there’s just this.

The ache of his lips and the raw protest of his throat. It would be easier, if Sebastian would just let Charles blow him, instead of straddling his chest and just fucking his mouth. At least Sebastian has released his hands, lets him brace himself against Sebastian’s thighs.

Eventually, it will end. Sebastian will need to rest, and eventually, the night will end. Eventually, Erik will grow tired of looking at him, and send him away.

Maybe then, Charles could try to forget about all of it. 

“Look at me.” The words carry a command that cuts through the haze of Charles’s mind. He obeys.

Sebastian smiles and Charles tries to care.

“-- absolutely beautiful. How much you can take, it’s perfect, it makes you perfect-- ’s why you have to start Pets young, you know-- when they can still learn... too old, and they just..”

Charles stares, his body feeling less and less real, as Sebastian tips his head back, and rocks himself in deeper.

He only notices Sebastian’s gotten off because Sebastian pulls away. Because the taste of come coats his mouth and the head of Sebastian’s cock smears the last of it down his chin.

Lazily pleased with himself, Sebastian’s movements are languid as he slips down the bed, settles himself between Charles’s legs to carelessly, too-quickly and too-roughly, pull the plug free from Charles’s body. Charles’s breath catches, but he doesn’t whimper. He doesn’t whine and he doesn’t cry out Sebastian’s name. 

Everything feels hollow. Hollowed out.

His voice is ragged as he asks, “How old am I?”

For a moment, he thinks Sebastian might not have heard him. And then Sebastian’s grip finds his hips again, the searing crescents of his blunt fingernails burning against already-forming bruises.

“Is this what Lehnsherr’s using you for?” There’s something lethal in Sebastian’s voice, and a sore muscle along Charles’s cheek twitches.

He doesn't understand the question, the accusation under it, but he's sure, blindly and inexplicably sure, that Sebastian had known, all along, that something had been off. That there had been something _wrong_ with his provenance. It's just a fact; getting worked up over it won't make a difference now. He can't even explain why he wants an explanation so badly when he knows it's futile-- knows he should stop. “How old am I?”

In his mind’s eye, he can see Sebastian reaching for his throat again, before it happens. Charles can feel himself moving, but for the life of him, he doesn’t understand how they wind up as they do-- with Sebastian on his knees, Charles’s thighs clamped around his neck. If there's one thing in the world that Charles is certain of, it's that he cannot let Sebastian's hands get around his throat one more. Sebastian’s hands are scrambling - brutally scraping, clawing - along his sides, but Charles locks his ankles and squeezes.

Sebastian’s knee tries to rally some sort of assault, but it only sends them both tumbling to the floor.

Sebastian’s protests turn feeble. And then cease. His body howls from the demand, but Charles waits another thirty seconds, methodically counting it off in his head, before he forces himself away, onto his hands and knees, blindly fumbling for his jeans.

In the back pocket, there it is. The second autoinjector. He manages to fumble away the cap, letting it fall to the floor as a gurgle sounds in Sebastian’s throat. Sebastian’s leg is the closest thing, and at least he doesn’t give it a second thought before he slams the needle-end of the emergency sedative against the back of Sebastian’s thigh.

For a moment, all Charles can do is stare, while Sebastian’s breathing goes steady and slow. Eight hours, he remembers distantly. He has no idea what time it is now, or how long it's been since Logan had gone under, in just the same way.

Whatever glass barrier he’d been able to erect around himself comes crashing down. Because he’s here. He’s with Sebastian. He’s run away. Erik has no idea where he is, but is sure to know what he’s doing. Erik will hate him.

And Sebastian-- good lord, what he’s done--

Charles stomach heaves. He attacked Sebastian. His owner. He knows, he _knows_ he isn't Sebastian's anymore, but the first and most lasting lesson taught in Obedience Schools is compliance, and the world collapses down to a singular reality in which Charles has attacked his owner. He--

He barely makes it to the toilet across the hall in time.

After the third round of vomiting, Charles is sure there’s nothing left in his stomach.

He slumps back onto the floor, come drying on his face, surely leaking out of him elsewhere, and lets his back fall against the cold of the side of the tub.

“Is he dead?”

Regardless of how meek the voice, Charles’s heart falters in his chest, and it’s all he can do to suck in a breath as his gaze jerks towards the source.

He stares at the blonde girl in front of him. She can’t be more than twelve. Maybe she’s older, but the sole garment of her oversized t-shirt is underselling it.

Either way, she’s just a kid.

And Charles can’t stop staring at the collar around her neck. A miniature version of the one he used to wear.

She’s just a _kid_. 

She looks over her shoulder, across the hall, to the open door of Sebastian's bedroom. “Is he dead?” she repeats, with a tinge of hopefulness that has Charles quite sure he’s about to throw up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone, meet Raven.


	60. Chapter 60

“No,” Charles says at last, finally finding his voice. “Not dead.” The sound of it is a tattered thing, but it doesn’t seem to alarm her. Nor does the sight of him, naked and bruised. Charles tries not to find any meaning in that. “Just sedated.”

Looking Charles over, she asks, “You sick?” 

It’s not an unreasonable guess, he supposes. Some fragmented corner of his mind is just desperately glad that she doesn’t ask if he’s okay.

Shaking his head, he lifts a hand to his neck, and starts popping free the fastening of his collar.

He doesn’t have to look up to know that the soft bump he hears is the sound of the girl backing into the doorframe. 

“What are you doing?” she whispers, like she’s afraid they’ll get caught.

Charles just looks at her, holding her gaze as he pulls the collar from around his neck. 

“He doesn’t get to touch me anymore,” he says quietly. The sound of the buckle against the tile floor is loud in comparison, and she jumps. “I’m Charles. And he doesn’t have to you anymore, either.”

She runs.

The door to the room across the hall from Shaw’s slams shut behind her.

It was worth a try.

 

Shaw’s dead weight is more difficult to maneuver back onto the bed than Charles had expected. The aching soreness of his own body is easy enough to ignore; the real challenge in managing Shaw’s long limbs. By the time Charles has him on his back, has Shaw’s wrists carefully cuffed to the bed frame, he has to take a moment-- to sit, to breathe.

To try to think.

Now that his body has cooled down, he thinks he can see Shaw’s design; every touch had been designed to bruise. Not to break, not to mar him. Just to leave him sore for days. To linger. It’s something he used to do before going out of town for a few days, to reassure Charles that he’d never really leave him; at the time, Charles had been more concerned with how to fill the empty hours of Sebastian’s absences than where he might be going, or why.

Under these circumstances, it just seems cruel. Had the tables been turned, had he been Shaw's-- well, no, he never could have done this, not as Shaw's. But, on the times when Shaw had loaned him out, there had been certain expectations, regarding his treatment. Regarding how far someone else could go.

The soft, electronic whirl from Shaw’s dresser is startling, yanking Charles’s attention towards the source.

Shaw’s laptop.

He remembers his first two weeks with Shaw, the glow of the screen in the middle of the night, faintly illuminating the room after Shaw had exhausted himself. He remembers Shaws apologies for his distraction, whenever he put his laptop aside.

_A regrettable necessity, my sweet-- can’t let the business run itself. But now you have me all to yourself._

There’s a sharp pinch of discomfort in his neck, from the speed with which he looks back to the doorway. To the closed door, on the other side of the hall. 

He hadn’t been that young. Surely. Not with Shaw-- he couldn’t ever have been as young as that girl looks. 

The absurdity of the thought has him looking back to the laptop. What Charles doesn’t remember is Shaw being careful with it. It might be a simple thing to not recall, but he doesn’t remember Shaw bothering with security measures.

On the third try at the password, the welcome screen is loading. And Shaw has a thumb drive, just sitting there. Out. On his dresser.

Finding the encrypted files isn’t difficult, but downloading them onto the drive takes a bit of time. It’s not as though Charles has any idea how to access encrypted files, but if anyone does, it’s Azazel. And if anyone can make something come of what’s in them, it’s also Azazel.

 

He’s only just snatched up his jeans, only just slipped the thumb drive into one of their back pockets when that same, quiet voice, is behind him again: “Can we... leave?”

The girl is back. Hovering in the doorway of Shaw’s bedroom with pillowcase in her hand. It’s half-stuffed with something-- clothing, perhaps.

All Charles can do is nod. He has to wonder if she even has any proper clothing to use, seeing as to how she’s still wearing nothing more than an enormous t-shirt.

A spare bit of clothing, Charles can survive without. Pulling his shorts free of his jeans, he holds them out to her. “You can wear these, if you like.”

At least shorts and a giant shirt are, conceivably, what a child would sleep in. And he’d rather have her dress in his clothes, rather than something of Shaw’s.

“We’re really leaving?” she asks, eyeing the garment.

Charles nods.

“Then you need--” In lieu of finishing, she drops the pillowcase and grabs his hand instead, pulling him out, into the bathroom once more.

She sets the hot water running and quickly grabs a hand towel before shooing him back to sit on the edges of the tub. Charles waits in bemused fascination, and it isn’t until she’s coming towards him with the damp cloth that he understands that she means to tidy him up before they go.

As if he would forget. A smile is breaking over his face as she rubs his chin clean. He can’t help wondering if she’ll feel obligated to tell him to put on clothes.

He can’t help wondering how old he looks, to her. His mind darts away from doing the math, but not before he can glimpse the reality that he’s probably closer to her age than he is Erik’s.

“Is there something you like to be called?” he asks, when she moves on to his neck, taking deliberate care around the bruises forming there.

“I always thought ‘Raven’ was a pretty name,” she says, after a moment.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Raven.”

 

Raven’s dressed, such as she can be. And Charles is cleaned up - as much as he can be, and dressed - himself.

He pulls the thumb drive from Shaw’s laptop and slips it into his back pocket. He’s halfway across the room when Raven asks, “And we’re not coming back?”

Charles knows what it is, to try to sound sure, and to fail.

“Never,” he insists, all too easily.

But first, he makes his way over to the bed, to pick up Shaw’s phone from off the bedside table. It only takes a moment to use its camera to snap a photo of Shaw, unconscious and debauched and shackled to the bed.

It takes half as long to send the photo to the contact, **Emma**.

As he waits, Charles doesn’t look up to Raven. He doesn’t want to have to explain himself. He doesn’t know that he can.

When the phone vibrates in his grasp, Emma’s contact photo flashing across the screen, Charles doesn’t hesitate to answer. “Hello, Emma. This is Charles. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

He terminates the call, and tosses the phone onto the foot of Shaw’s bed. 

 

“I was not aware we are running a taxi service.” There’s a faint lift to Azazel’s brow in the rearview mirror as they pull away from the curb.

“The rumours were true,” Charles says quietly. “They just weren’t about Logan.”

The streets go blurring past. Charles is brazenly terrified of checking his phone. Turning it on to call Azazel had been difficult enough.

Charles glances down to Raven, where she’s curled in against his side. He can’t tell if she looks older or younger like this.

However furious Erik might be, however he winds up feeling towards Charles, he wouldn’t take any of it out on her. He’ll want to help her, the same as he wants to help every Pet he comes across. And Charles doesn’t want to give her a reason to be wary of Erik.

So when he looks up again, he says, “Если он хочет послать меня долой--” Azazel’s eyes instantly dart back to the mirror, and Charles forgets where he was in what he’s trying to say. “Вы предложили, один раз--”

_If he wants to send me away-- you offered, once--_

But Charles doesn’t get any further than that before Azazel says smoothly, “Если вы хотите.” _If you wish._ “Но я сомневаюсь, что это дойдет до этого.” _But I doubt it will come to that._

How Azazel can be so confident, Charles doesn’t know. But he feels too wrung out, too utterly exhausted, to argue.

 

Even when the lobby disappears behind the elevator doors, Raven keeps holding Charles’s hand. She drops her pillow case, and her free hand starts fiddling with her collar.

It’s then that Charles realises he’s left his leather one on the floor of Shaw’s bathroom.

“Why’d you tell your friend to leave?” she asks, looking up as if she’s been oblivious to his starting.

“-- better this way,” he says, the first word lost to the soreness of his throat. He won’t sound normal for days, he thinks. Which he supposes was the point.

Azazel can tolerate quite a lot, in terms of Erik’s mood, but Charles thinks that Erik punching him might be going a step too far. It was nice of Azazel to offer, though.

“Are you going to be in trouble?” This time, she’s at _his_ neck.

Before he gets a chance to answer, the doors slide open, and Ceasar springs to his feet in front of them, giving a cheerful little yip before Angel comes all but crashing into the elevator.

Given the exuberance with which she says his name, and the force with which she throws her arms around him, Charles doesn’t blame Raven for immediately hiding behind him. Charles doesn’t let go of her hand; he just tucks it behind his back, and uses his other arm to hug Angel back, trying to ignore the dull pain the resonates through his body.

“You’re so stupid sometimes,” Angel whispers against his ear, just before she presses her lips to his cheek.

He assumes that noticing Raven is what causes her to go stiff. She backs up just in time to save the elevator doors from closing on them. There’s a tangle of worry behind her eyes that he can’t even begin to puzzle out.

“Charles, what did you do?” The wariness in her tone is unexpected, but Charles is too tired to feel surprised.

“Where’s Erik?” He ignores how she frowns at the sound of his voice. “ _Angel_.”

“Shit." Scrounging through her back pockets until she finds her phone, she mumbles, “He’s... out. Looking.” For him. Or for Shaw. 

The idea of Erik finding Shaw, somehow, as he is at the moment-- there’s no way to be entirely sure of what Erik would and wouldn’t do.

“Tell him to come back,” Charles says, stepping into the living room. Angel’s eyes follow Raven as she comes along, but she taps away at the screen of her phone in silence. “This is Caesar,” he mentions to Raven, who kneels down.

Caesar dutifully sets to sniffing her over, though after a moment he sits and looks up at her expectantly, as if surprised that she hasn’t offered him some kind of treat.

It’s the first time Charles sees Raven smile.

 

“No-- different than if he had strep,” Angel says, for what feels like the third damned time. She likes Hank, she really does, and she understands that he’s had A Day. But they’re all having A fucking Day. “He’s got these marks on his neck-- it looks like--”

“Look, if Charles needed a doctor, I’m pretty damn sure he could get one,” Hank practically snarls, which is when he strays beyond the boundaries of Angel’s patience. Her eyes narrow, and Hank takes a gratifying little step backwards. “Look, he didn’t say anything about needing--”

“Yeah, _shocker_ ,” Angel snaps. “Because Charles is fucking _renowned_ for his thoroughness on providing people with details of his master plans.”

What’s most infuriating is that it probably never even occurred to Charles that he probably needs to be checked out. He hadn’t said anything before he took that girl up to his old room, but Angel’s not an idiot.

Before Hank can try to muster any kind of comeback, Erik steps out of the elevator, and Angel gets bumped from the slot of top of the food chain. With rage pouring off of Erik, he gets the uncontested rank of apex predator.

“Where is he.” It’s more a demand than a question-- and the quiet kind, which always a Bad Sign. Erik isn’t really the ‘ _oh, it’s okay, I’m just glad you’re all right_ ’ type.

Hank actually takes a step back, as if trying to remove himself from Erik’s field of vision, and Angel’s not even going to fault him for that.

She puts up her hands, as if Erik will take kindly to being treated like a wild animal. “Look, he’s upstairs--”

Okay. Bad opener. Because Erik just turns and starts walking. More like storming. But with less stomping.

“Erik, you need to calm down,” she tries, following up the stairs after him. He ignores, unsurprising. Fine, shock value: “Look, he’s not alone--”

Too much shock, she recognises immediately when Erik halts and deigns to look over his shoulder at her. “What did you--”

“Jesus, fuck-- _no_ ,” she spits out, because Erik seems to have gotten into his damn-fool mind that she’d have done something let Shaw into the apartment. It’s the only guess she supposes could inspire that level of fury from Erik.

When Erik immediately takes up the climb again, she half-wonders if maybe she should have said yes. “Could you _try_ to calm the fuck down!” she hollers after him.

Silence. Shocker, that. Angel lets out a long, irritated sigh before she huffs herself back down the stairs. Not that huffing actually helps, but it almost makes her feel better.

“Still think nobody here’s going to need a doctor?” she grumbles at Hank as she walks crosses the living room.

At least he has the sense to sit his arse down on the couch.

She’s rifling through the hidden bar in the cabinets beneath the flat screen when he tries to ask, “You’re not going to...”

Without turning around, she’s sure he’s looking upstairs. “There’s not enough money or tequila in the world.”

He looks at her, confused, when she slumps down on the couch next to him and pulls the stopper from a bottle of Patrón. No need for a glass-- she can drink straight from the goddamned bottle.

To his lifted brow, she says, “What? Doesn’t hurt to _try_.”


	61. Chapter 61

When Erik throws open the door, it looks like Charles is alone-- startled guilt painted across his face, standing there in one of Erik’s own goddamned turtlenecks. And pyjama bottoms, as if he somehow thinks he’s going to be sleeping in Erik’s bed.

“What were you thinking?”

It doesn’t matter that his voice sounds practically inhuman. That Charles steps back from him-- from _him_ , after _Shaw_ \-- is almost too much, and he can't keep himself from advancing. “Did you even stop to think! For single goddamned second, Charles, did you even bother to think about what you were doing! Or what could’ve happened! Or what you put _everyone_ through!”

If it weren’t for the way he’s crowded Charles back against the dresser, he probably wouldn’t have heard Charles’s soft litany of, “-- just, not right now, please-- or not _here_ , can’t we please, please just talk down--”

“Now you want to talk?” he demands, half enraged that Charles doesn’t just stand there and listen. “Now, after you’ve done whatever you damn well please, after you lie to Angel, and terrify Hank, and--”

“Erik, _please_ \--” It’s wise, on Charles’s part, to think better of it when he starts reaching out his hand to touch Erik. “Azazel said--”

“No.” The single syllable drips through Erik’s clenched teeth. He doesn't want to hear about Azazel right now; even the echo of Charles saying it in his head makes the hairs on the back of Erik's neck stand up on end. “I don’t want to hear you even say his name.” His volume is rising fast again, in no way helped by the fact that Charles keeps glancing over his shoulder, keeps trying to put distance between them, as if he can’t tolerate the physical proximity.

Maybe it _is_ Azazel. It’s a thought that tears across the forefront of his mind, knitting itself together out of half-formed worries and a freshly reborn suspicion of absolutely everything.

That’s what this whole thing was, wasn’t it? Charles’s little plan with Azazel, something the two of them hatched all on their own, it seems.

“What!” Charles practically yelps out, the sound of it high and indignant. Like he’s _offended_. Like he’s gearing up to defend _Azazel_ , who still treats Charles like property sometimes, who’d offered to buy Charles for himself.

It twists a sudden blade in his guts, the idea of how many times Azazel’s taken Charles out. To dinner. To parties. To all the things Charles loves that Erik is horrible at and that Azazel breezes right through.

Do they sit together as things wind down, heads tucked carefully together in quiet conversation? Does Charles give Azazel that small, private smile that Erik hadn’t even realised he covets as his own until this moment. “Don’t you dare--”

“Erik--”

“Shut up!”

“Erik you’re _scaring_ her,” Charles's voice cracks, his eyes gone frantic with a desperation Erik hadn’t seen building.

“ _Her_? Isn’t it enough that you--”

“Don’t you yell at him!”

Erik’s still glowering when he looks to the source of that high-pitched demand. Even though the girl flinches a bit, she holds her ground, face scrunched red and terrified, eyes wet with tears she can’t let fall, her hands balled into white-knuckle fists.

“It’s not his fault!" She's shaking a bit, the towel wrapped around her shaking right along with her. "I _made_ him--”

Before Erik can figure out what she’s trying to say, let alone who the hell she is, Charles behind her, spinning her around to look at him, rather than Erik.

“Here, Raven-- look at me. I’m not going to let anybody--” she twists in the hold he has of her shoulders, as if she’s afraid Erik is going to sneak up on her whilst her back is turned. “Raven, look at _me_.” Were Erik able to hear better over the roar of his own anger thrumming in his ears, he’d have been surprised at the authoritative tone in Charles’s voice. “I’m right here. Remember what I did to Shaw?”

Erik doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to think about it, but his mind provides a sickening tableau of possibilities. At first, he can’t tell which is worse, between the options of imagining Shaw touching Charles and imagining Charles touching Shaw. In the end, he doesn’t have to choose, as his masochistic brain finds a new bout of creativity in envisioning both.

The distant scrap of reason left functioning in his mind makes a timid attempt to suggest that Charles wouldn’t be so casually discussing that sort of thing with a girl so young. But who the hell even knows what Charles is and isn’t capable of, after tonight?

Feeling his stomach lurch, he’s sure he either needs to vomit or punch someone, but the route to both the nearest bathroom and Charles’s face are blocked by this... this _girl_ , this girl who’s crying messily into Charles’s chest, clinging to him like he’s goddamned life raft.

And Charles is looking at him. Pleading with him, like Charles has never pleaded for anything.

“-- but I couldn’t leave her there.”

With Shaw.

“I didn’t-- I didn’t know what else to do, I told her she’d be safe here, that you could help her--”

Because she’s a Pet. Through the curtain of her wet hair, Erik can see the collar now.

The blaze of his temper suffocates itself down to embers, and he manages to restrain himself from resisting it.

There are... priorities. And a Pet-- a girl, because she’s too young to be anything else--

“Has Hank checked her out yet?” For some reason, it’s those words, and a cold, flat tone, that has something like shame flashing behind Charles’s eyes, and dropping that gaze to the floor.

“Not yet,” Charles says, voice whisper-soft again.

“Downstairs,” is all Erik manages to bite out before heading for the door to the hallway.

He knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help slamming it shut behind him as he goes.

 

“He’s using her as an excuse,” Erik mutters, arms staunchly crossed over his chest.

“Yeah, sure thing-- he liberated one of Shaw’s illegal Pets, ‘cause he doesn’t want to talk, so he’s using her as a human shield,” Angel rattles off, the words blending together just a little. “Because _that_ makes sense.”

“He doesn’t need to be in there.” Charles has been in the downstairs study with Raven and Hank for the better part of thirty minutes, leaving Erik out in the living room to stew with Angel.

“Maybe she’d be okay being alone in there if you hadn’t gone up and yelled,” Angel grumbles into the bottle of tequila before Erik snatches it away from her. He caps it and sets it down with such force that Angel’s worried it might actually crack.

“We don’t know anything about her,” he says, if only because he can’t put words to why he’s really furious.

The carelessness of it, however, turns Angel’s eyes dark and crackling. “Just don’t. Logan didn’t have any idea what was going on-- Hank says he shouldn’t have even been able to open his eyes, let alone make any kind of coherent sense.” She shouldn’t be allowed to have her words come out so clear and crisp, with as much as she’s been drinking. “I know you’re pissed at Charles and Azazel, but if you’ve moved on to a level of paranoia in which Charles and the tween are here to spy on us for Shaw, I’m going to have to do something drastic.”

Erik is beyond rolling his eyes. He glares at her, as if his gaze alone could permanently impair her ability to speak aloud.

“I want to see Azazel in the morning,” he all but growls.

Angel makes a sound of disgust, but grabs her phone off the coffee table and storms upstairs.

 

When the door to the study finally opens, Hank emerges with the girl dozing in his arms. His steps halt when he finds Erik, still standing, still waiting.

“It’s mild,” he says, immediately, clearly trying to explain why the girl seems almost unconscious. “Just to help her sleep. I’ll just...”

Abandoning the attempt, Hank just slips by Erik to carry Raven up to Charles’s room. Leaving them alone. Finally.

But now that he has the chance, Erik finds he has too much to say - too much anger and too many questions - to put any of them properly into words.

“I’m sorry,” Charles croaks out. Erik hates the way it makes Charles sound vulnerable-- a notion that’s not helped by the choice of shirt; he’s practically swimming in Erik’s turtleneck. 

He hates the way his thoughts turn to the way Charles excels at playing a role, hates the idea that this - and too many other things - might be nothing more than posturing for Charles.

“What’s wrong with your voice,” he returns coldly, before he can stop to think that he might not want to know.

Reluctance, pure and blatant, staggers behind Charles’s eyes. At what point did Charles start finding it preferable to hide things from him?

Another moment of expectant silence passes before Charles’s fingertips peel down the high collar of the shirt, revealing a purpling band of bruises. Evidence of Shaw’s hands on him.

What is Charles expecting? Sympathy? Charles knew, better than anyone, what he was getting himself into, and that’s almost the worst of it. Charles chose this. Chose to lie and sneak around and run off. The nobility of the aim doesn’t excuse the rest.

A sliver of him wants to know, for certain, that Charles hasn’t been truly hurt, but he takes his solace in the fact that McCoy wouldn’t have let Charles go unevaluated.

“I thought Angel was going to tell you about Raven,” Charles says, the hush of his voice hiding how rough it is.

One corner of Erik’s mouth curls unpleasantly. What was there for her to tell? Apparently, Charles had just showed up with the girl in tow.

But that’s not even the point.

“We help Pets, Charles,” he says, slowly enough for Charles to get it, that ‘we’ in this instance doesn’t include him. “We help Pets get away from bad owners-- so anytime a Pet doesn’t want to be with their owner anymore, all they have to do is fucking say so.”

 

Charles can’t speak. He can barely breathe. But it’s nothing to do with the ache in his throat.

He tries to tell himself that Erik can’t possibly think that-- can’t really believe that he’d done this because he doesn’t want to be with Erik anymore. But Erik had to him as much - hadn’t he? - that if Charles wanted to share his bed, Charles couldn’t be with anyone else. 

He’d known the cost going into it.

It’s strange, to feel glad for the way so much of his skin if covered.

There had been a time when he’d have done nearly anything for Erik to think of him in any sexual fashion, and now he just wishes he could scrub from Erik’s mind the ability to think about what he’d done that night, and who with.

He doesn’t want Erik to even look at him, not like this, and it makes it impossible to look at Erik.

“Go to bed,” comes Erik’s stony command.

Obeying - just obeying without argument or question - is too temptingly easy to be resisted. He doesn’t know if he’s just too tired to think, or if it’s just reassuring to know that the can, but it lets him feel as though he might be able to knit himself back together just a little.

Charles is halfway up the stairs before Erik adds, “ _Your_ bed.”

As if he’d needed to.


	62. Chapter 62

“Charles, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Angel’s voice has taken up a habit of dropping to meet Charles’s volume, maybe to make the hush in his voice seem less strange. Or less obvious. 

Angel glances over to where Raven sits at the kitchen counter, intently watching the waffle iron. “Hank says he needs to rest,” she tries.

His head hurts, along with all the rest of him, and his eyes feel so warm that they have to still be puffy and bloodshot, and the idea of sitting through breakfast with Angel talking quietly is almost more than he can stomach.

“I just need to see him, see that he’s okay.” To remind himself why this was worth it.

 

“Is Charles in trouble?”

In Angel’s experience, giving kids a straight answer rarely pans out well. And at the moment, Raven is definitely a kid.

“Why would you think he’s in trouble?” she asks, pouring out another ladle of batter. She likes the whole waffle routine. Gives her something to do while she talks, or time to talk while she cooks.

“Erik yelled at him-- and he’d probably have kept on if I hadn’t stopped him.”

A corner of Angel’s mouth tugs upwards. Raven’s probably not even exaggerating; thugs, politicians, and lawyers Erik can stare down without a second thought, but put a Pet who needs help in his path and he trips himself up pretty nicely.

“Sometimes Erik’s just mad at the whole damned world,” she shrugs. “Try not to take it too seriously.”

Raven pulls the tines of her fork through the lingering puddle of syrup on her plate.

“If he’s mad about Sebastian, you could tell him I did it,” Raven suggests, and Angel glances over the rim of her coffee cup in Raven’s direction.

“Yeah?” she says, affecting a considering tone as she sets her coffee aside. “Which part?”

“All of it,” Raven says quickly. “Hardly anybody knows Charles was even there-- you could just tell him that I drugged Sebastian. It was just one of those little punch injector things, I could have done that. He has me sleep in the bed with him sometimes, so I could have done it while he was asleep and then just chained him up after, and--”

“Charles did _what_?”

Angel regrets saying it as Raven goes silent and wide-eyed, but she couldn’t have helped it.

“Look, really, it’s fine-- it’s just sort of hard to picture... _Charles_ doing anything like--”

“I saw it!” Raven insists before snapping her mouth shut again. She chews at her lips, though, and Angel waits her out, carefully tending the waffle iron without diverting her gaze from the girl across the counter. Eventually, Raven caves: “He had to! Sebastian was going to keep him, even though Charles isn’t even his anymore.”

“He told you that?” Imagining Sebastian Shaw taking a teenage girl for a confidante is a bit much.

“He said we were going to have to move to a bigger place,” Raven says, her voice going hard, decidedly not amused at being doubted, “because Charles was going to be coming home to stay.”

“So Charles... sedated Shaw,” she says slowly. It’s not that much of a jump, she guesses, seeing as to how he’d taken it upon himself to pilfer Hank’s kit and sedate Logan, too. “And then the two of you just... left?”

“He handcuffed Sebastian to the bed,” Raven reminds her. “I guess in case he woke up, or something.” Her gaze skitters away for a moment before she adds, “Charles needed a bit of cleaning up before we could go.”

Angel looks at Raven, and Raven just looks right on back, eyes giving away nothing.

“Was he okay?” Angel asks, because she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want any other detail than that.

“He threw up a lot.”

She wants to punch Erik. “How much of it did you see?”

“Most of it. I know how to hide.”

And she wants to flay Shaw to pieces.

“You’re burning the waffle.”

 

Logan sleeps through the half hour Charles spends in his bedroom, and Charles lets himself be grateful for the time alone, for the quiet, and the rhythmic rise and fall of Logan’s chest.

 

“What’s that?” Acid clings to the words as Erik stares at the small duffle bag Azazel’s placed on his desk.

He’s already constructing in his mind the vitriol he’ll sling in Angel’s direction for sending Azazel down to the offices rather than calling him up to the apartment.

“The change of clothes Charles felt might be necessary,” Azazel says, like he hasn’t got a goddamned care in the world as he settles into a chair across from Erik. “But it would seem that Shaw was not interested in cutting him out of his clothes, so there you have it.”

Erik can’t bring himself to demand to know how often Azazel and Charles talk, without his knowing.

“But, what is far more interesting,” Azazel is saying, as he reaches into the interior pocket of his blazer, “is this.”

A thumb drive.

“And what is _that_?” he snaps, all the more irritated that Azazel doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest.

“As of yet, I have not any idea.” Azazel turns the thing in his hand, as if contemplating its very existence. “I have some people working on it. It seems that Charles managed to extract a few encrypted files from Shaw’s laptop.”

A cold dread starts seeping its way up Erik’s spine.

“I blame you, of course,” Azazel says with a mocking sort of smile. “You must be a very bad influence on him.”

Erik wants to insist that he hadn’t known anything about it, let alone been capable of giving Charles instructions, but the words stick in his throat.

It’s too easy to remember the stacks of paper Charles had handed over when he’d wanted information on Shaw. The way Charles had parroted out Erik's opinions on Shaw's conduct, like some sort of penance.

“I didn’t want him to do this-- any of it,” he finally says, each word clipped and harsh. Of all possible options, this was the last he'd have chosen. What's worse is that he'd known what Charles would want to do, had he been aware of the option-- he'd _known_ how reckless Charles would be with himself and had done everything he could think of to prevent it. “I didn’t even tell him--”

“To whom should it matter, what you wish Charles to do?” Azazel jumps in, hand waving dismissively. “If his behaviour troubles you, discuss it with him.”

“You helped him.”

“He needed assistance.” An edge of warning creeps into Azazel’s voice and it has Erik narrowing his eyes. “Shaw wanted a week. I got him down to a single night. And Charles got Logan, and a real chance at useful information. And you? Do you not now have all the peace of mind you could possibly desire?”

All Erik can do is gape. ‘Peace of mind’ is so far removed from his reality that the words lack any practical meaning.

Azazel’s chuckle only has his fists balling tightly. For once, a threat seems to register, even if it only prompts Azazel to hold up a hand clearly meant to have Erik contain himself.

“Brokering himself was Charles’s choice,” Azazel lays out as an infuriating premise. “Just as was returning to you. Surely, it has not escaped you that he could have stayed with Shaw. I cannot imagine Shaw objecting-- has not that troubled you, wondering over which owner Charles prefers?”

Erik can’t get his jaw to unclench, even to supply a suitably scathing response.

“I had thought you would be pleased by such evidence of Charles’s favouritism.” And the smugness to Azazel’s smirk is enough to let Erik know that Azazel actually believes his own spin.

Which proves more of a hurdle for his temper than he’d like to admit.

 

It can’t hurt to talk. Right? Of course right.

Erik ignores the nagging at the corner of his thoughts that tries to insist that, for Charles, talking might actually hurt.

And he resists the urge to check his watch again, and opts instead to watch the floors tick by on the elevator’s readout screen. He can call this his lunch break, and it’ll be fine. He can’t imagine that Charles has all that much to say for himself, anyway.

Just because he’s still a bit livid doesn’t mean he has to avoid Charles. He’s even mostly sure he can avoid yelling.

 

Charles had thought it was Erik, when the chime of the elevator had sounded.

He doesn’t really remember being introduced to the woman who’s still hugging him. Erik’s mother, he knows, from the pictures of her that Erik has. She seems taller in person, but a little less slender. More solid and real. But he can’t remember what he’s supposed to call her.

And he doesn’t know why it makes him feel so fragile, when she says - for maybe the fourth time - that everything’s fine.

“Really, my dear,” she’s saying, patting his back while Charles tries to keep himself from shaking, “everything’s going to be all right.”

He has to blink almost constantly to keep his vision clear.

It’s embarrassing is what it is, that he can’t even compose himself properly. That sense of floundering only gets worse when the elevator opens again, and out steps Erik-- his face stony and his eyes sharp.

Somehow, it’s all the motivation Charles needs to disentangle himself from Erik’s mother. He can’t bring himself to look at her, or Erik-- and he’s just glad that Raven seems to like Angel enough for him to not have to worry about leaving her on her own.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, unable to tell if anyone else is even talking. “Excuse me.”

It’s all he can manage before he retreats upstairs, inexplicably desperate to put the barrier of a door between himself and the rest of the world, from all their eyes, and from Edie’s quiet assurances.


	63. Chapter 63

“You can try to avoid Edie if you want, but she’ll find you. She’ll give you enough time to let you think you’re off the hook, and then she’ll get you.”

“I’m not avoiding her. She’s taken Raven shopping. I can’t avoid someone who isn’t here. It’s impossible.”

“Like you’re not avoiding Erik?”

“Angel, you don’t--”

“Would you be quiet? I only let you come down with me because you promised not to wake Logan up.”

Charles finds himself compelled to search his own conscience; what he finds so soothing about time in Logan’s room as he recovers is part of what he enjoys about Logan’s conscious company-- a blissful absence of poking and prodding.

It takes time, but at least it occupies his mind. And, if nothing else, he’s able to conclude that, when awake, Logan’s disinclination to question him at every turn comes from either a respect for his privacy, or - perhaps - merely simple respect.

The thought it heartening.

 

Dinner becomes an arduous affair, only made bearable by the way Edie and Angel carry on, and the way they draw Raven seamlessly into their chatter.

Erik can’t remember the last time Charles looked him in the eye. He sits across from Raven, next to Angel. As far from Erik as possible.

_I just... needed that._

He tries to push the memory away, along with the simultaneous impulses to wrap his arms around Charles and to yell until he passes out from lack of oxygen.

 

Charles can feel his heartbeat hammering in his ears, setting the rhythm for the sickly input of his too-hot hands and his too-cold gut.

He can’t see. There’s nothing to see. It’s too dark.

“Charles!” Raven’s eyes are warm, but worried. Visible in the creeping light diffused by the curtains.

He opens his mouth to speak, but he finds himself dragging in a hasty breath.

“He’s just down the hall,” she insists.

Who? “What?”

“Erik’s fine, he’s in his room, just down the hall.”

Oh. Had he asked about Erik? Nevertheless, Charles nods, all the while telling himself that there’s nothing to be afraid of. That he's safe, in his bed, just down the hall from Erik. That it’s just Raven. That he’s safe here. That he’s--

‘Home’ is a word that Charles finds he doesn’t really understand. There's just a void, where the meaning of it should be. It wouldn't be so problematic if it weren't for the way he can feel the meaning it holds for others pressing in against him.

Raven wipes his cheeks dry and tells him everything’s okay, and he pushes that thought away, too.


	64. Chapter 64

“I’m going to kill you for this.” It’s all Logan can think to say. After at least three minutes of staring at Charles, who’s curled up with a book against the nearest wall in his bedroom, that’s all he can come up with.

At first, Charles doesn’t even look up. He just laughs. It’s a small sound, but tinged with a relief that sets Logan’s teeth on edge.

Had Angel told Charles? what he’d thought Charles had--? 

She must have. Of course she has. Logan doesn't want to picture the kicked-puppy-dog look Charles must have pulled-- or worse, that flat... blank face Charles puts on when he's trying to convince himself and the whole damned world that he hasn't got feelings to hurt.

Even through the fog of whatever meds McCoy had given him, Logan manages to recall the vagaries of a grisly fate Angel had sworn would befall him, should he ever again suggest that Charles might be in league with Shaw. He can’t even tell how many days it’s been. This is why he hates the goddamned drugs. Well. That, and the nausea.

“I’ll tell you what-- you get yourself back into fighting shape, and I’ll let you have a go at it,” Charles offers, his mouth hinting at a smile as he finally looks up.

Logan just stares. It’s still unnerving, the image he has of Charles curling up with Shaw, and it’s made all the more unnatural by having this Charles in front of him now. He doesn’t understand how Charles might be able to just… click on and off like that. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“There was a deal on the table. So I took it.”

Simple as that. Hell, for Charles, maybe it was just that simple.

“You’d have killed him to get me back, if the tables were turned. You’d have done it for me, or Angel, or Erik. But that wasn’t the hand we were dealt.” He watches as Charles draws in a shaky breath, like he’s trying to go easy on his ribs. “You’ve got what you’re good at. Me-- well, at least my way didn’t wind up with anybody dead.”

Logan has to wonder if Charles could actually kill Shaw, if he really wanted to. But that sort of wondering only gets him wondering how Charles couldn’t, on some level, really want to see the bastard dead.

“What’d he do to you?” he asks, unable to ignore familiar enough signs of concealed injury.

Looking more imposed upon than Logan thinks he has any right to, Charles is peeling off his jumper. “It’s more dramatic than it looks.”

Bruises and still-red clamp marks and what looks vaguely like a minor burn smeared across the center of Charles’s chest. Dramatic is a word for it, even if what it really means is ‘designed to push Lehnsherr into a fit.’ But it’s the small bandages along Charles’s sides that catch his gaze.

“Just a few scrapes,” Charles supplies before he puts back on his shirt. “He wasn't thrilled when I decided it was time to go.”

He doesn’t insult Charles by asking how he managed to get away.

“God, I want to hit you.” That’s not what he means. He wants Charles to hit _him_ \-- he wants Charles to even the score, but he can't come up with anything that might settle these particular scales.

“Technically, you might owe me a solid punch.” Charles coughs out an amused sound in the wake of Logan’s incredulous stare. “Well, I did drug you.”

Charles is... joking. He thinks.

Logan doesn’t understand how Charles can smile at him. Can tease at him. Can not resent him.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Logan says quietly. He means it. With his bare hands, maybe. That seems nice. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he can’t help feeling a bit of understanding for the way cats bring dead rodents to the humans they live with.

He suspects Charles would respond with all the same fleeting horror and revulsion, if Logan came home and deposited a dead Shaw at Charles’s feet. Somehow, it fails to dampen the idea’s lustre.

Charles sighs, curling one leg under himself as he sits on the foot of the bed. “With everything else that’s going on, don’t you think a murder investigation, too, might be a bit much?”

Fine.

Charles may have a very small point.

For the moment.


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After far too long away (and, miraculously, with all of my organs still intact), I have awoken. Hopefully, like a phoenix from the ashes.
> 
> Hopefully, like a hyper-productive phoenix from the ashes.
> 
> So sorry for the ridiculous delay. My gallbladder tried to rebel, and then some complications cropped up. But! I seem to be out of the woods. And back to the fic. Thank you, to all of you.

Caesar romps across the sprouting grass, and Charles wishes he could find the sight more heartening than he does; the thing that tries to stir in his chest is too exhausted to do anything more than stagger and fade.

When he hears the rooftop door clatter shut behind him, he can do nothing more than press his eyes shut and wish for solitude. Caesar takes little enough notice, until Raven comes tearing after him. It’s a blessing, really, that she bypasses Charles entirely, opting instead to play what appears to be a somewhat confused game of tag with with dog.

A corner of Charles’s mouth inches upwards, if only because he’s sure it ought to.

“You know, when Erik first mentioned bringing Caesar out to New York, I worried about him not having a proper yard.”

Edie’s voice never fails, these days, to send a faint bolt of alarm up Charles’s spine.

“It was Angel’s idea,” he says, aiming for casual.

“Really? I’d thought Angel wanted a sandbox.”

“Well. Using the roof. For something other than a roof, I mean.” It _had_ been Angel’s idea; she just hadn’t thought the sand thing through.

Quiet follows, thick and cloying as Edie leans against the short stone wall, just a few feet away from where Charles sits. As if he needed further proof that there are a myriad of things wrong with him, Charles finds he almost welcomes to sense of suffocation.

“I understand what you did.” Her words are weighted, rather than gentle. “For Logan. For my son.”

And Charles-- he doesn’t know how or why his mouth just opens, but it does: “I wish you didn’t. I wish _he_ didn’t know-- I wish nobody did.”

Had he been able to figure out how to do it secretly, he would have. At least then, it could have been his own sacrifice, instead of dragging everyone else with him onto that proverbial altar.

“I said understand, sweetheart.” And now, her voice is gentle, and Charles hates it. He hates the way it makes his eyes burn and his throat tighten. He hates the way it makes him miss something he doesn’t have words for.

The weight of her hand over his has him jerking his hand close to his chest. Even if he regrets it immediately, he can’t figure out how to put his hand back on the ledge between them.

Eyes resting on Raven as she attempts to teach Caesar to roll over on command, Edie carries on as though nothing had happened. “Erik has a hard time understanding, when people make sacrifices for him.”

Somewhere along the line, Charles must have pieced together that Erik’s mother had spent time as a Pet. He has no idea why, or who got her out of the system, and he has no intention of asking. He hadn’t before, and he sure as hell isn’t about to start prying now.

“I knew what I was giving up,” he says, because someone has to hear it, and at this point it seems like the only person who might understand Erik’s severity is his mother. She, of all people. must understand Erik’s rejection of shades of grey.

“You love him.” She doesn’t sound like she’s guessing, so there’s no point in pretending.

Charles nods. Somehow, that turns into his mouth falling open, into dragging in a ragged breath. Because she has to understand that it doesn’t matter. “And now, he can’t-- he can’t even--”

“Oh, Charles.” He isn’t sure if her voice or the way his throat clamps down that keeps him silent. “He might surprise you.”

 

That night, Erik texts Angel to let him know a rescheduled meeting will have him missing dinner.

When Angel reads the text aloud, Edie tuts her tongue from where she stands at the stove, muttering about how Erik works entirely too much.

Edie makes soup for dinner.

Charles doesn’t have the heart to say that it’s better than Angel’s version. Not in front of Angel, anyway.

 

Raven brushes her teeth with a new, blue toothbrush. She’d been sharing Charles’s until Angel had realised that they hadn’t gotten Raven any of the most basic supplies. Housing stray Pets, it seems, is an uncommon thing in Erik’s home.

Were Logan in better shape, he suspects Raven would already be on her way to the west coast. According to Hank, he’s recovering remarkably well, but travel still isn’t advisable. Charles wonders if maybe she’ll fly out with Edie.

“I could sleep somewhere else,” he mentions, when she brushes past him, heading for the bed. He hadn’t exactly intended for them to share a bed, it had just… sort of established itself as a pattern.

“Why?” she returns, not looking over her shoulder as pulls back the covers before climbing in.

“I wake you up,” he shrugs.

He’s pushed himself off the door frame to the bathroom, and is flipping the light switches off by the time she says, “You don’t sleep so good. It’d be worse, if you were alone.”

There’s little arguing with that. He doesn’t like the burden that places on her, but he’s quite sure Raven would only be indignant if he said as much.

She leans over, all but dangling off the bed so that she can reach down towards Caesar’s bed pillow. He licks at her proffered wiggling fingers for a moment, and once satisfied, he sprawls himself out. Raven’s still grinning over the dog’s sleeping arrangements when she insists, “So just, stop being weird.”

Something that sounds frightfully close to a laugh huffs itself out of Charles’s chest. “I’m not sure I know how.”

Raven smiles a bit, as if he’s made a joke. Sitting down on the least-occupied side of the bed, Charles is content to let the topic fade.

It’s only after they’ve settled themselves under the covers, after their eyes have adjusted to the dark, that Raven asks, “Is Erik mad because you didn’t kill him?”

There’s only ever one _him_ between the two of them.

“No,” Charles says, because he thinks that’s true. At first, anyway. “And probably.”

The both shift a bit-- Raven onto her side, facing away from Charles, and Charles tucking a hand under his pillow.

“Why didn’t you?”

It isn’t even a surprising question. Rather than sighing, Charles lets out a slow, silent breath through his nose. “That’s just not who I am, I suppose.”

 

Erik doesn’t even think he’s being all that paranoid. It’s just a little too convenient that Azazel stops by to talk to Charles whilst he’s out to lunch with his mother.

Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about simply letting himself into his own damned office. But that was two weeks ago. At the moment, all he can do is stare at the shut door.

Angel gives an exaggerated roll of her eyes as she passes the corridor on her way to the elevator. Erik doesn’t move from where he leans against the wall opposite the door. He doesn’t uncross his arms and he doesn’t even look in her direction. She’s the one who let him in, after all.

“Oh, leave him be,” Edie fusses, pulling Angel along to keep up with Raven and Caesar.

They’re gone - up to the roof, no doubt - for nearly ten minutes before the door opens.

It’s all the more infuriating, the way Azazel’s features frost over just a little upon seeing him.

“Erik.” The word is clipped.

“You didn’t think it was worthwhile to call, to let me know you were stopping by my home?” For someone else, it might have been a rude question, but Azazel isn’t his friend. Azazel is his lawyer.

There’s something snide to the arch of Azazel’s brow and the tilt of his head. “Perhaps, if you would check your messages from time to time.” His confusion must show on his face, because before Erik can insist that he hasn’t missed a single call from him, Azazel’s saying, “Your office phone-- you know, the one I use for matters of business.”

“Business?” Sneaking in to see Charles is ‘business’ now?

“The suit against Marko.”

Oh. That. Somehow, it all seems like a lifetime ago.

“Perhaps I should not be surprised that it has slipped your mind,” Azazel says, too smoothly, too sharply. “After all, if you have become so overworked that you have begun to neglect--”

“Mr. Romanov.” Each sharp syllable is brimming with an entitled sort of expectation that seems so foreign on Charles’s tongue.

It’s somehow startling to see Charles, quite suddenly, in the doorway, as if he’d been there all along; wearing that stony face, his chin tilted up in a way that all but invites a challenge.

For once, Azazel is silent.

“If you have concerns over how an owner treats his Pets, I understand there is a veritable carnival of bureaucracy in place to see to such things.” It’s only because Erik knows Charles that he understands how barbed the comment it.

Maybe he even means it-- maybe Charles is really just trying to shut Azazel up. If so, it somehow seems to work; were Erik able, he’d marvel a bit at the twinges of annoyance that tug at Azazel’s features as he brushes past, making his way to the elevator.

Erik watches Azazel leave the penthouse without a word, and without so much as a glance back.

“I wasn’t expecting him,” is all Charles says, voice gone soft and flat as he slips around Erik.

As much as Erik wants to know what the hell just happened, as much as he wants to call Charles back, he’s already vanished upstairs by the time Erik regains some mastery over the workings of his jaw.


	66. Chapter 66

Erik discovers a crick in his neck as he pushes himself off of the couch in his study. It’s not a great couch to doze off on-- but the couch in the living room is common ground, and his upstairs office is too close to Charles’s room.

He only realizes how late it’s gotten when the hallway proves to be lit only by the faint glow of the television. It’s Angel he expects to find when he rounds the corner into the living room, with a bowl of popcorn in front of some awful-movie-marathon, not Charles. Or, more accurately: Charles and Raven. Belatedly, Erik notices her, asleep, with her head in Charles’s lap. Her feet are tucked under a blanket and Charles is carefully weaving a careful, neat braid out of Raven’s long blond hair.

Halfway through wondering where Charles even learned how to braid hair, Erik finds himself supposing it might have come from Charles’s time with the Babishes.

 

“Why did you take her?” 

Charles’s fingers don’t falter, despite the way the question, the way Erik’s voice alone, rings in his ears. He doesn’t look to the side, doesn’t look up, doesn’t let himself react to the fact that Erik’s just voluntarily spoken to him. “This was the only place I knew she’d be safe.”

Almost before he can finish the words, Erik is all but muttering, “I know why you brought her here-- why did you _take_ her?”

The words are quiet, but easy to hear, with the volume of the television so low.

He didn’t _take_ Raven, and something in him wants to say so, to insist that she’d wanted to come. And she had. But that’s not what Erik’s driving at, he’s sure.

“I couldn’t just leave her there,” he says before he can let himself think much more. “I hadn’t even known anyone was… but then she was standing right in front of me, and it just seemed--” wrong. “She’s too… she’s just a child.”

“She’s thirteen.” Erik’s voice is impossible to read. Maybe it’s just that Charles has forgotten any inflection of Erik’s that doesn’t directly pertain to anger. “She’s older than you were.”

At that, Charles can’t help but look up, hands going still. He wants to think that he knows what Erik’s up to-- that Erik wants him to draw parallels between himself and Raven, but aside from the fact that it’s a poor comparison, he’s not sure if what he thinks matters to Erik anymore.

The angles of Erik’s face appear exaggerated by the bluish glare of the television screen, his eyes all but hidden by shadow. In every possible way, he feels so far away.

“We’re different,” Charles hears himself say, unable to tell why it sounds like an apology to his own ears. She wasn’t properly trained to deal with Sebastian, or anyone; everything about her, every move she makes and the words she barely considers all scream out a lack of formal training. “I was prepared, for years, for that life.”

“If Shaw’d wanted her to take a few etiquette courses--”

Something twists in Charles’s gut.

“I can go about ten days without food before I start to lose it.” He doesn’t even know why he’s talking, except for the fact that Erik’s a few more words away from making an idiot of himself. It’s novel, how frustrating it is that Erik seems to understand about so much and yet so little about… Pets. Shaw. Everything. “About sixty hours of sleep deprivation before I start hallucinating. I know how long I can kneel until my feet go numb and how long I can go without breathing before I’ll black out.”

Erik is gratifyingly silent.

“These are things I knew long before Shaw ever laid eyes on me. Training isn’t just about knowing which fork to use.”

For the first time, Charles is tempted to tell Erik something about Shaw-- maybe the time Shaw had to go out of town for a few days, and left before remembering to tell Charles he could eat if he wanted to, before remembering that he’d temporarily forbidden Charles from eating anything except what Shaw fed him. What possible harm could it do? It’s not as though it could make Erik any more averse to being near him.

“That’s what they do in Obedience Schools?” The question sounds almost wary, though Charles can’t imagine Erik doesn’t understand about the schools.

“It’s right there in the name, Erik. They teach you how to obey.” How to be perfect.

Raven would have fought Sebastian, and Sebastian would have broken her for it. Of that, he has no doubt.

Breaking the growing quiet, Erik asks, “So, you took her because you didn’t think she could hack it?” It’s not as barbed as Charles expects the question to be.

“I don’t know,” he admits, turning his attention back to finishing off Raven’s braid. Erik had told him, once, that it was an acceptable answer. He can almost hope that still holds true. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

 

“Huh,” Angel hums from beyond the barrier of Erik’s paper.

She wants someone at the breakfast table to invite her to elaborate. Were his mother with them, instead of discretely visiting relations in the outer boroughs, she’d have seen to it. Erik, for his part, stays silent. If he just keeps himself tucked behind the paper, he doesn’t have to think on the fact that Charles has taken to running every morning, instead of eating with them.

Angel’s second humming sound is louder. Raven, traitor that she is, takes the bait. “What?”

“Seems Emma Frost and Shaw have broken off their engagement.”

Raven pauses too long before she says, “Oh.”

Erik thinks he could have ignored it, if not for that. There are dozens of reasons why the Frost-Shaw merger might go under before it ever actually came together. If the reason were at all meaningful to _them_ , Azazel would have said something. Much as Erik is still seriously considering mounting Azazel’s head on the wall in his office, Azazel hasn’t faltered a bit, and simply keeps on as he always has. Even if Erik doesn’t want to admit it, he can see the utility in such consistency.

Letting the newspaper in his hands go lax enough to bend itself in half, Erik turns his gaze to Raven. “Oh?” he repeats.

 

“How long will it take, for you get her settled somewhere?” Charles ignores every muscle in his body that wants to push Logan out of the way and put the coffee on himself. He knows better. Logan’s far more agreeable when Charles behaves as though he isn’t still recovering.

Enduring watching Logan putter around his own kitchen is less difficult than going back upstairs after his morning run.

“Few weeks, to work out the details,” he says, a shrug on his voice while his shoulder remain stiff. “Normally, we have a little more of a head’s up.”

Charles tries to smile and Logan doesn’t comment on his poor performance. He figures it’s a fair trade for not pointing out that even in a few weeks, Logan might not be in any shape to see to relocating Raven himself.

“I was wondering-- does Edie ever…” And it’s strange, that ‘Edie’ comes off his tongue more easily than ‘Erik’s mother.’

“What, help out?” Logan leans back against the counter while Charles nods. “Not really. But I dunno, she really seems to like Raven.”

Charles nods. “Raven seems to like her.”

Logan’s gruff chuckle is cut short, probably by cracked ribs. “Seems like the only person she likes is you. She likes Edie a hell of a lot more than she likes Erik, but that’s not saying much.”

At that, Charles feels his mouth trying to smirk; sometimes Raven looks like she’s trying to figure out which of the objects nearest to her she could throw at Erik’s head at a moment’s notice.

Was that what Erik had expected him to be like, when he’d first arrived from Sebastian’s custody?

“She’s just worried he’ll… misbehave,” he sighs. Surely, no one in the Lehnsherr household is going to call that an unreasonable fear on her part.

Not wanting to expand on the topic, Charles sets himself to refilling his glass of water. He’s finished off half of it before Logan asks, “How’s… stuff, between you two?”

Really, it sounds as if Logan would rather be punched in his cracked ribs than ask. Charles can relate; he’s just as disinterested in discussing it.

Thankfully, Logan’s doorbell rings. A few minutes later, Logan is too busy grumbling while Hank prods at him to remember that Charles had failed to answer the question.

 

“I can’t tell if you’ve gotten worse, or if you’re just out of practice.”

Even though Erik knows his mother’s only teasing, it takes great effort to keep from rolling his eyes as she takes one of his knights.

“Maybe you’re just distracted,” she offers. He doesn’t need to look up from the chessboard between them to know the exact slant of her expectantly raised brow.

“I have a lot on my mind.” All things considered, she’s been remarkably… circumspect, thus far, with regard to certain topics.

“Yes, it’s clear just how busy you’re making yourself. Convenient excuse for putting off what you’d rather avoid.”

Well, so long as they’re agreed his efforts towards avoidance have been effective, he sees no reason to abandon them. He’s reaching for his bishop when she says, “He’s thinking about leaving, you know.”

That quickly, it’s hard to hear over the pound of his pulse in his ears.

Erik reminds himself that he’d never intended Charles’s time with him to be permanent. That what makes him different is that he doesn’t keep anyone against their will. That Charles isn’t supposed to be any different from any other Pet they’ve encountered.

“Well.” His tongue feels like it’s made of cotton, but his hand doesn’t shake as he slides his piece across the board, claiming one of his mother’s pawns. “If that’s… It’s entirely up to _him_ \--”

“He doesn’t want to leave. He just doesn’t know how to stay, and he’s not going to figure it out unless you actually talk to him.”

“He slept with someone else,” he bites out, frustrated that his mother doesn’t so much as flinch, but he’d not going to get more vulgar than that with his mother. He’d explained how things were going to be between them to Charles, it wasn’t like Charles hadn’t known-- it wasn’t as if Erik had been then one to suggest any of this. “It was his idea, and--”

“Erik,” she says. The word is quiet, but far from gentle. Her hand settles over her fist, and he can suddenly feel the dig of the pawn clenched in his grasp. “It was Shaw’s idea. And if it’s the only one Charles heard… well, either you didn’t have one, or you didn’t share it with him.”

He can’t tell his mother the truth. He can’t tell his mother that there had always been another option-- that he could have just killed Shaw and been done with it.

So he stays silent.


End file.
